This is the content of an apiphany that occured on the 19th of November 2009 whilst walking back from Spar in the night and the rain after buying tobacco.
I live in my own dream world. I know this and have known for some time. I live in this dream world because all else is meaningless.
Life is short. Too short. The only way I could be content is through immortality; an impossibility and therefore my happiness is impossible. Life is short as there is not enough room for experiences. I want all the experiences in the world. However this is something I cannot have in this world, but can have a fraction of in my dreams. Hence, in this only way I can be somewhat content.
I can read books or watch films or listen to people and through these abstract modes feel emotions I can never feel through my own life, see things I can never see and hear things I can never hear.
Home is an illusion. Home is a concept based on a building, possesions and people. The building with eventually become delapidated and be demollished to be replaced by somethings else, something of another new moment, of other people. The possessions will brake, be thrown out; they not be worth anything to anyone as the people to whom they were so special will be long gone, forgotten, meaningless. The people will grow old and die. They will be the old generation who were so ignorant. Home only exists in one moment to one person. This is too fleeting, too unstable and therefore it is much wiser to separate ones self from the concept alltogether.
Home can however exist in ones mind, and this is the best place for it. One should be at home in ones mind with no connection to a place or a building or other people.
I have studied my family tree quite carefully. It is something in which I find great pleasure, however it only serves to confirm what I have stated above.
The people, my own family, are dead. They are gone. They lived their lives, they experienced great emotions, saw great things and yet this is all gone. It only ever existed to them, in that moment. When I read about them, read their birth, baptism, marriage and death certificates I read of some of the most important moments in their lives. Moments that shaped who they were, what they did and how they thought; yet now these moments are only remembered through pieces of paper. Paper which cannot hold anything but names and dates and other details.
What is even more worrying is that when I look back so far even these mere pieces of paper are lost. The ancestors who's lives have made mine possible are lost. I don't known their names, where they were from, how they felt, how they thought. They are lost. And this is the effect of only three hundred years. Three hundred years from now will I be lost?
Will anyone bother research their family to find some ancient grandmother who's name was Daisy? Will they care? I will be merely a name and a few dates. Everything that makes me me will be gone.
If this is true then what is the point of life? Of an outside life at least. I can live in dreams which matter only to me. Through these I can feel fullfilled. There will be no documents to record them yet they are intrinsic to my very being. And that is what matters. I will be content within myself. I can collect information, thoughts, emotions, experiences and relive them all through my dreams.
I will grow old and die. The things that were so important to me, which shaped my life will be gone. The buildings in which I lived, where I was educated, where I laughed and cried will also be gone. Eventually they will be remembered by no-one. I will be remembered by no-one. If this is true then is there any value in anything I think or do?
Yes. For one simple reason. It matters to me in this moment, and that is all there is.
Points:
Time spent:
Canary word: Present
Possible AI signals:
Original Text:
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125,018 Literary Works • 672,861 Reviews
i found this story interesting because in general i agree with you. (i suppose, since this is technically "other fiction" that i agree with the narrator, but i am guessing that in this piece the narrator is one and the same with you, the author). my problem with this though was that it read too much like an essay. if in a story you are going to dwell almost entirely in the mind (which i think becomes kind of a rut that you have to break out of) then you have to embellish it with images/descriptions to give the reader SOMETHING concrete to hold onto. otherwise it is completely dry, textbook prose. it becomes a stiff essay, not a story. from my point of view (which i realize is mine and maybe mine only) you need to pump this up a little, give the reader something besides a plainly stated idea. give them good writing.
that aside, i instantly like you because i know exactly where you're coming from with this piece. good luck.
A rather dismal thought, but whatever!
It's not really a story at all, so I won't bother you about the lack of conflict or whatever. However, there are several points that don't really make sense. The narrator seems to be worrying about things that are illogical.
"Will anyone bother research their family to find some ancient grandmother who's [should be whose] name was Daisy? Will they care? I will be merely a name and a few dates. Everything that makes me me will be gone."
Yet, she talks extensively about the research that she does to connect (reconnect?) herself with her family. Seeing that she took the time to learn this, then why does she conclude that nobody else does this or will do this for her? It's not like genealogy is an unpopular thing nowadays or anything. Lots of people do it. Not a lot of teenagers or whatever (lol, teenagers are stupid), but I know that several members of my family have done this extensively, sent the results to the whole family, and we ooed and ahhed about it. Also, our great aunt will tell us all these stories about our ancestors, and it's generally fun. So yeah, she may not have a lot of friends that do this hobby or anything, but she is certainly not alone in trying to figure out the histories of her family.
So... this narrator. Yes, she introduced herself as living in a dream world, but does she live in such a dream world that she thinks of herself as being totally alone in her wanting to research her family or otherwise? And if that's the case, how exactly does she justify this in fact of all the contrary evidence? It seems so self-wallowing, as if she thinks she's the only one who's ever done this and who's ever thought of this, and whatnot. To make it worse, she doesn't seem to have any connection with the present. True, you said her entire family was dead at the present, but it seems odd that she wouldn't have a scrap of memory of her family to tie her in with the past and to really make a connection that shows that people can leave impressions that can last. But no. None of this. And this makes it all seem so self-wallowing.
I don't know.
I would probably recommend that you put some sort of relationship with her past family or adopted family (because odds are that she had to have some sort of parents, even if they were foster parents). That way, at least we can give her the benefit of the doubt that she has had some contact with people so that this thought has the backing of real experience... not just self-wallowing thoughts of futility of this world. Without the experience explicitly implied, this sort of piece never works.