Lines

It's all about lines. The most important line, the line separating you from the people you work with. It doesn't help to get too familiar to make friends. You need boundaries, between you and the rest of the world. Other people are far too messy. It's all about lines. Drawing lines in the sand and praying like hell no one crosses them.

At some point you have to make a decision. Boundaries don't keep other people out, they fence you in. Life is messy, that's how we're made. So you can waste your life drawing lines...or you can live your life crossing them. But there are some lines that are way too dangerous to cross. Here's what I know. If you're willing to take a chance...the view from the other side...is spectacular.

A Ruffled Tulip

I’ve made so many mistakes and others made a mistake by allowing me to enter their lives. Because all I do is mess everything up. I just make everything worse for everyone. I know that I have been unfair to you all the time and I am a very selfish person. Who does not give a damn about anything else but my problems and what I am going through.

Today I did something terrible to you. I don’t know whether you would forgive me for it, but I know for sure that I won’t forgive myself for putting you through that. What goes around comes around right? Well if its any constellation, I am paying for it every second. I know that no matter what I say or do will make things better. I have caused you enough pain. Being with someone like me will only make your life a living hell.

So to you the trouble of more suffering by being with me, I would suggest that we should go on our separate lives just as fate intended to lead us. Maybe we were never meant to be together. But I sincerely pray and hope that you would never ever in your life encounter a monster like me.

R U Happy ?

So, according to you, no one is happy?”

“Some people appear to be happy, but they simply don’t give the matter much thought. Others make plans: I’m going to have a husband, a home, two children, a house in the country. As long as they’re busy doing that, they’re like bulls looking for the bullfighter: they react instinctively, they blunder on, with no idea where the target is. They get their car, sometimes they even get a Ferrari, and they think that’s the meaning of life, and they never question it. Yet their eyes betray the sadness that even they don’t know they carry in their soul. Are you happy?”

“I don’t know.”

“I don’t know if everyone is unhappy. I know they’re all busy: working overtime, worrying about their children, their husband, their career, their degree, what they’re going to do tomorrow, what they need to buy, what they need to have in order not to feel inferior, etc. Very few people actually say to me: ‘I’m unhappy.’ Most say: ‘I’m fine, I’ve got everything I ever wanted.’ Then I ask: ‘What makes you happy?’ Answer: ‘I’ve got everything a person could possibly want—a family, a home, work, good health.’ I ask again: ‘Have you ever stopped to wonder if that’s all there is to life?’ Answer: ‘Yes, that’s all there is.’ I insist: ‘So the meaning of life is work, family, children who will grow up and leave you, a wife or husband who will become more like a friend than a real lover. And, of course, one day your work will end too. What will you do when that happens?’ Answer: There is no answer. They change the subject.”

“No, what they say is: ‘When the children have grown up, when my husband—or my wife—has become more my friend than my passionate lover, when I retire, then I’ll have time to do what I always wanted to do: travel.’ Question: ‘But didn’t you say you were happy now? Aren’t you already doing what you always wanted to do?’ Then they say they’re very busy and change the subject.”

“If I insist, they always do come up with something they’re lacking. The businessman hasn’t yet closed the deal he wanted, the housewife would like to have more independence and more money, the boy who’s in love is afraid of losing his girlfriend, the new graduate wonders if he chose his career or if it was chosen for him, the dentist wanted to be a singer, the singer wanted to be a politician, the politician wanted to be a writer, the writer wanted to be a farmer. And even when I did meet someone who was doing what he had chosen to do, that person’s soul was still in torment. He hadn’t found peace yet either.

So I’ll ask you again: ‘Are you happy?’”

~ Taken from The Zahir: A Novel of Obession By PAULO COELHO ~