Two Steps From Salvation
There are so
many trials a person might find themselves struggling through at any point in
time. Many trials are within one’s own mindset, internal struggles such as an
addiction to overcome, or some other habit to break, or a behavioral trait to
change, or an outlook to improve upon, or all kinds of other examples. These
trials involve, almost exclusively, your own willpower and (to say nothing less
of their values and impacts) have at least that advantage going for them,
because you have ultimate control over your own mind. The sheer force of your
own will actually holds significant weight when the object of its application
is within your own mind and being. Still others, many, many others, inherently
the most frustrating of all, are those which require the cooperation of other
people to overcome. Such trials are the most frustrating of all simply because of this fact—because no
amount of sheer willpower can influence another person to act accordingly with
your goals if they are not themselves pursuing a similar one of their own (or
at least willing to indulge you). But for this added complication there is so
much more appreciation to be had when success is finally achieved and salvation
is at long last glorifying your soul.
Salvation can
come in so many forms, among which I believe one of (if not the) most important and fullest of all is
the mutual appreciation of one’s thoughts, feelings, and desires they wish to
pursue with the full cooperation of
another human being. But when you’ve been struggling to achieve some
passionate goal for so long, fighting off wave after wave of intense
opposition, battling the judgments and the disagreements and the miscommunications
and the unwillingness of others to assist you, enduring countless
disappointments and let-downs while all along being so ready and willing in
your own mind but endlessly frustrated at the apparent refusal of cooperation
of everyone else whom your success depends upon to reciprocate your efforts, it
can become so easy to just let it all go. Sometimes it
becomes so easy to lump such a massive accumulation of frustration and
resentment into one last-ditch effort of abandonment, pack it all up in a
tightly closed suitcase of hopes and dreams you were once so intent to give
chase to, toss it over the edge of the unfinished bridge before you set fire to
it and just forget the whole thing altogether.
But one should
think long and deeply about such a decision, because you have undoubtedly made
some sort of progress toward such a goal even if it seems like every single
individual effort on your own part has been shot down and crushed under the
feet of the very people you have so intensely tried to connect with. If nothing
else, nothing at all else, you’ve gained invaluable insight for the future into
the sorts of people who are likely going to respond in such an undesirable way,
and this should assist you in your renewed search for more meaningful, more
attainable endeavors—because your search should never end. There is always knowledge and experience to gain without
necessarily giving up entirely on any original goal, even if you realize you
have to give up entirely on certain people
who were once a part of your goal. Even when you’ve come so far as to stand within
two measly steps of the glorious salvation
you so valiantly wish to achieve, shining so brightly right there in front of
you but just slightly out of your own
reach, the people in your life very likely hold the keys to unlock the final
advancements—those final two steps—but, as they hold the keys, they have the
advantage of being in control of their
own desires and these unfortunately might not coincide with your own. You
can spend vast amounts of time in constant frustration over being so close to the end but with no power to
bridge that tiny remaining space by yourself.
Some goals
simply require the cooperation of just
one other person in order to achieve their fullest potentials. This factor
makes such goals the most difficult of all because, again, the sheer force of
your own will cannot impose the genuine, heartfelt cooperation of another
person’s. This cooperation must come from
their own desires. The only thing you truly have control over, in this
case, is how you go about making your
own precious intentions known, and how effectively you portray this for others
to respond to. Some people seem to have a natural gift with this skill, and can
seemingly influence just about anybody to cooperate with them. Unfortunately,
many of these people who have such a natural “talent” seem to take a liking to
taking advantage of and manipulating the people they somehow so easily gain the
trust and favor of. And so the variables are further complicated by this fact,
and in turn so many people seem to have become irrationally hesitant to divulge
anything more than the bare essentials of a friendly relationship, and
especially reluctant to invest the efforts necessary to develop something so much more deep and meaningful, such
as romance, or just a closer friendship, with a fellow human being. And so because
of this tendency countless people are experiencing heartbreak in every waking
moment because of this clash of ideals and the separation from goals and
desires which have every reason to be achieved with proper cooperation. Of
course I’m not suggesting that all pursuits must
be matched by the objects of their desires, but that more communication and
efforts would do wonders to promote effective
progress, even “negative” progress. If nothing else, at least some closure
on the idea. Some heartbreaks are inevitable, in many cases because the initial
premise of the pursuit was not genuine. Rationale and communication and
understanding true feelings are always crucial, and even when the
necessary outcome is a tragedy to one side, tragedies have a tendency to sort
themselves out and bring an epiphany of sorts, as a person finally grasps the
true sense of the ideal they had poured so much effort into. Nothing is truly
as “good” or as “bad” as it feels at the time, but can be understood to the
closest possible truth in proper time and consideration. Sometimes you might
believe you are standing but two steps from salvation of your troublesome
efforts and yet the only positive recourse is to turn and find a new path.
Sometimes what once seemed like your glorious salvation was in reality nothing
but a hopeful illusion, and your path needs to start fresh on a new course.
Sometimes defeat is the necessary epiphany you need. You should never burn down
the bridge, however. At least let them stand as reminders of how close you had
come in each attempt, perhaps even where they had gone wrong.
But if you are
genuine in your intentions, and are pursuing another person who is genuine in
their own intentions, then this daunting, almost-un-scalable wall can actually be overcome to its fullest
potential. And I believe that this achievement really is one of the highest
beauties of this world, in large part because of the tremendous difficulty and
complexity in its achievement, and also in the immense, priceless rewards that
it showers its recipients with. Nothing else in this world can provide you with
what a true, deep, genuine companionship with another person can. This applies
to true, boundless love just as much as it applies to true, deep undying
friendship. There is beauty to be had in these relations like absolutely nothing else can compare to,
because the pleasures of the mind simply have no comparison in the purely
physical realm. What’s most amazing to me is that this physical and mental connection
with another human being can bring so much
hope and joy and appreciation, and this beauty knows no rival, but it can be
either provided or withheld at the tiniest possible whim if just one person involved is so reluctant to reciprocate. You can wreak some wild
havoc on a person if you know how to mess with their head. Words could never do
justice to the urgency with which everybody should realize how impactful this
realization is. Do not play mind games with a person so devoted to their
passions; let them down honestly and with care if this needs to be the case.
The truest
among such successful connections are likely to be very hard-won, although
there are of course many cases that just seem to click almost effortlessly. Such cases, I believe, are as close to the
idea of “love at first sight” as are possible to achieve. I do not draw a
distinction at this point between the love of a romantic partner and the love
of a truly deep friendly one, or even a genetic one. All are incomparable in
their fundamental benefits to and among each and every single last one of us. The
differences are only in context and in expression. I think we all need such
connections, as many as we can get our
hands on, and the heavily-guarded keys that we tend to keep tucked away
inside our minds might perhaps benefit from a little (or a lot) more careful efforts put toward sharing them with
others who are passionately and genuinely seeking them out.
We all desire
those deepest of connections. We all envision those everlasting friendships,
those uncompromising family relations, those fairy-tale romances. Assuming an
effectively rigorous system of filtering through to those people who really are
legitimately reaching out to you for genuine friendly or romantic
companionship, then those who slip through the barriers and traps and land
mines and pitfalls and armed defense systems are worth your efforts to cooperate with—as you are worth theirs.
Once they’ve proven themselves mighty in the face of your own personal
defenses, then you should devote some careful consideration into how much of a
future relationship (friendly/romantic) is likely to be successful. At this
point the odds are heavily in positive favor, as they’ve already overcome
whatever number of hurdles you’ve set up to keep the reckless fools at bay…
assuming your traps are effective. So now give them the time of day they
deserve. They’ve come this far for good reason.
In my case it
has been both the genuine, deep friendships and
true romantic companionship that I have been fighting for so long to establish
further—although the latter of which has been, by far, the more intense struggle
over a recent two and a half years and is the primary inspiration in this. There
have been moments in which I felt like everything was at last falling into
place, only to have the rug pulled so violently from underneath me that I
didn’t even realize I was crashing to the ground until the sudden onset of pain
forced the realization. For so long I was given only vague, all-but-concealed
tastes of a connection which was never actually placed within my own reach. It
was always kept dangling just beyond the ability of my own efforts to grasp,
and yanked away every time I finally felt that I had figured it all out. Efforts
were not genuinely reciprocated, and
it took me far too long to realize this had been the case all along. This sort
of thing can be avoided, for all people, male and female, friends and lovers,
long-held relations and brand new ones. Nobody needs to go through so much just to finally have the truth laid
bare in front of them whether or not there actually is anything genuine and
worthwhile for them to gain and offer in return.
For so long I
have been a mere two steps from this salvation
from my own worries—two steps from achieving the goal that I have been so
vigorously desiring and pursuing, the goal that has been so vividly, brightly shining
in my own mind, so beautifully portrayed in my dreams manifesting in the depths
of the night, but all the while so helplessly dependent on the cooperation of just one single other person that no
amount of sheer willpower alone could bring within my grasp. At times it felt
like success was so close, so near to me that I could almost get a grip on it, but it had
always ended up slipping through my fingers right at the moment I made the
lunge. I am not proud to say that I persisted for far too long in what was so
often made painstakingly clear to me was a fruitless endeavor—I was blinded by too much optimism and too much desire to see it through to an
end that was never actually achievable, for achievement requires mutual interests and in these cases I was indulging far more efforts than were
worth the returns on my investments. Any situation which isn’t demonstrably mutual
is in all likelihood a dead end, and the sooner you can realize this fact the
sooner you can reassess your efforts and pursue something which actually holds the promise of cooperation. I
believe this is, by far, the most important consideration of all, but also the
most difficult to accurately judge, because everybody is ridiculously complex, which
is the single factor which makes this whole concept so frustratingly laborious
to accomplish.
I eventually
let go of the pursuit I had spent so much time and effort chasing, after
finally realizing that my efforts were fruitless in the face of so much
confusion and unwillingness. The weight of all that I finally released from my grip
severely blistered my fingers, which is funny because even an illusion can
wreak such unimaginable havoc on your mind and body, but of course they would
heal in time—although I had no idea how long this would take.
But then, not
so long after, almost as if as a reward a newer, much more brightly-shining
potential revealed itself to me as I realized that a dear friend of mine was
returning home after a very, very long trip overseas was coming to an end. And
I realized, not only during all of this struggling for so long but again when pondering
the possibilities of what could be once again pursued and reflecting on the
long, memory-filled history that I share with this person, that there is an
extremely deep and valuable lesson that I have learned during the two and a
half years that have separated our story, which is that the willing cooperation
of another human being to share with you your own thoughts and feelings and
passions and lifestyles, while sharing their own lives with your own thoughts
and feelings and passions and lifestyles, is meaningful beyond the scope of any possible combination of words. This cooperation is the key to everything that a genuine companionship
must build its foundation upon. This wild epiphany suddenly rushed into my
head, and it was almost as if I fell to my knees under the weight of its
realization. The people you should be sharing your life with, and your deepest
thoughts and feelings, should be returning
the favor. And this will be obvious. You should not be perpetually shrouded
in confusion. The genuine people will want to spend at least close to as much
time with you as you want to spend with them. They will let you know their own
feelings about you just as you so desire to let them know how you feel about
them. They will set aside time, that wondrously wild commodity we so often take
for granted, for you, because they
want nothing less. You will suddenly be contacted by those who care just as
often as you have been trying to contact them, and they will ask you for your
time just as often as you have been trying to ask for theirs. The precious
people who genuinely appreciate and desire your company will make themselves
known to you. They will cooperate with you.
And so she
returned, and we reconnected, and as the storm clouds retreated from my muddled
mindset I realized that we both have similar goals and passions and hopes for
the future and, most striking of all, we
both want to share our most deepest-held thoughts and feelings with each other.
And so I have at long last found that which I’ve been struggling to find in
another human being for so long, in the person that I never even knew whether I’d ever see again. It’s
absolutely incredible how quickly two and a half years can melt away into the
newfound mesh of old-and-new interests and experiences, and blossom into not
just what it always was, but everything that it had ever hoped to be.
There is an incredibly beautiful phrase, made even more beautiful by
its incredible simplicity: "The hardest part is over." It is a simple line, being only five
words, but I think it has enormous meaning behind it when you truly realize
such a reality. To me it basically represents an acknowledgment that the
toughest times of some pursuit are over, however hard they may have been. The
point is that you recognize them, and look ahead to the future that awaits the
aftermath—the future that will be better. Because what good
are the memories we hold so dear if we don’t use them as guidelines, always
striving to do better? I believe that optimism is one of the ultimate virtues
we can have, and what better way to put it to use? We need to believe that the future will be better. Even if things are
going great right now, that’s all the more hope to hold for tomorrow. Our
memories are the basis for this optimism, so that we have something to reflect
on and set our standards by. The deepest pits of sorrow you've ever hauled
yourself out of hold that much more relevance and insight into how to better
shape your future. It's such a beautiful thing to be able to look back on a
period of intense struggling and realize that it's over.
In the movie Office Space, the main character
reveals that every single day of his
life is the worst day he’s ever had. Despite the funny nature of
the poor guy’s situation, I think what everyone is meant to do is strive for the
exact opposite. In an ideal world every day would be greater than the previous. What if you could wake up
each and every morning and truly believe that this day was better than the
last? And if you could expand this realization, each new day's progressive
happiness compounded upon the previous, so much potential could be realized.
And we do have at least some control over that, if we act accordingly. A
determined mindset will work wonders. Tomorrow will be better, and the next day
even more so. It's a wonderful ideal, at least, and a few setbacks here and
there don't need to wreck the overall trend.
Being two steps
from salvation had always seemed like such a simple obstacle to overcome, long
ago. But I was foolish and naïve and I find it incredible how clear this is to
me now. Sometimes a new chapter in life makes you realize that the previous
chapter actually had ended long ago. And sometimes you realize that you never
actually had something you believed you did until you finally truly do. I just
never imagined how difficult this salvation would be to re-achieve, but now that
I am staring it in the face it seems like such a fitting irony for it to be
with the very person with whom I walked away from it in the first place. But
she came back around, and I made my hopeful desires clear, and she so
beautifully reciprocated, and so now, at long last, I have the cooperation I’ve been seeking for so
long. I have the cooperation of the single other mindset that has been
necessary to bridge this particular gap all along. And so these two seemingly
trivial steps, this separation from the glory of salvation which has been so
emotionally fearful and daunting for so long despite being so physically near
to me in the people around me, so seemingly simple in mind but so incredibly
difficult in reality, are finally laid bare and ready to be taken.
And so when at
long last this endeavor is achieved, and you are finally basking in all of the
glory that this success is shining down upon you, you will finally understand
that it no longer matters how long you had to suffer, because the two of you
hold everything that now matters together
in your hands. The world is now yours to conquer—to shape from your
collective experiences, joys and mutual interests to your will. Anything that
you want to experience together, go
and make it so! Make the memories
that you want to cherish. Create the
situations that you want to enjoy. Share the
thoughts that you want to appreciate.
Seize the moments that you want to last. The opportunity does not even
exist but there in your minds. This is not something that directly results from
the physical world around us, but something that we create through abstract
connections of the mind, and join together, and nourish through the years with
the heartfelt efforts that feed it through eternity until the very last breaths
our physical forms are capable of producing are spent at long last. And even
then it won’t be enough, it can never be enough, but it will be all that we
could have ever reasonably hoped for, and I don’t think there is any deeper
beauty in the end than knowing that you crossed over that boundary and achieved
the salvations of your once-troubled souls with the same person who is sharing
the pain of old age with you still. The best is yet to come.
And so I am, at
this moment, as I have been for so long, two
measly steps from blissful salvation… but now that I am hand-in-hand with
the single other person I want to take these steps with, the single other
person I long to appreciate life’s complexities and mysteries and joys and
sorrows with, to forever further our understanding and enjoyment of this crazy
world with, I am not simply going to
take these two steps…
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