The Quest for Ardee's Holy Grail

Since I’ve just finished reading Dan Brown's "The Davinci Code" i think that this was an apt title for today's entry. I know, I know, I’ve said that I’ll be on-hiatus for a while but I just couldn't turn away a friend in need. Maybe after this we'd be even-steven, huh, ardee?

- - -

What if, suddenly and without meaning to, your life fell into place, like a 10,000 piece jigsaw puzzle set in the likeness of Davinci’s Mona Lisa put together after laboring on it for weeks and weeks. What then? Would you savor the accomplishment by having it framed, with a gold-plated border and hang it where people could admire the it all the time so you can brag that you did it without any kind of help in only a matter of weeks. Or would you disassemble it again piece by piece losing interest in it then just chucking the pieces back into the box where it would just become some child’s plaything where it would get discarded too as soon as the child loses his taste for it.

Someone confided in me that he’d just found his inner peace after losing it and searching for it years and years ago. I was happy for him, truly I was. I’ve never so much envied him as he said that after being lost for the past couple of years, there he was, suddenly at peace with himself and to those that surrounded him. While I, holding no less than a college degree to my belt with some minor accomplishments on the side, still feels as if I’m not making any headway at all in the grand design of my so-called life. After battling emotional demons, getting heavily scarred from it in the process, my friend has sought and found calm. He is at peace. He is tranquil. Or so he thought.

His was the voice of reason. Not one people could count to him for advices, words of wisdom, and a listening ear. He would not offer half-baked advices, he would just listen and to those people who needs it the most, people who had so much to say but no one to say it to, that was enough. Even I had been guilty of foisting my trivial, sometimes not-so-trivial concerns, and he had been there. Always. Like clockwork. There were days when I would not hear from him for days, weeks even, but he'd call whenever I need him the most (usually Sundays).

But I’d forgotten that even those who listen needs to be listened to sometimes.

He is human after all.

And human wants and needs for his survival. Even if there was nothing to want anymore, because as I've said to him, sometimes it's the chase we want. And if we do get what we wanted, what do we do with it? Is it the same thing that we wanted in the first place? Should we have it framed, for the entire world to see or should we keep it in a box, tie it with a red ribbon and shove it under the bed?

It's a vicious circle, isn't it? We want what we cannot have and when we do acquire it, we long to be what we were before we got what we thought we wanted (I’m sooo confused right now). One can easily wish that he need not grow up, get older and die ultimately or not fall in love and get hurt but if, on some strange circumstance his wish be granted, where should he go then?

We were designed to be forever discontented. As a child, we long to eat gloopy Hershey’s bar and peanuts M&M's from morning til night until our teeth and stomach would ache we would ask our parents for a glass of warm milk or a plate of peanut butter sandwiches. It would go on and on until we get older, us, wanting to live our lives the way we wanted to. Wanting immortality by clinging to our material, emotional, and erotic wants. But suppose we earn all the money there is to earn in the world, fallen in and out of love, and fucked our lives away, what do we do then? Should we voluntary wish for death to come and take us away from all the superficialities that we thought we once wanted?