Most people meet for a minute
Once my father said, “It’s so easy to socialise for you guys, because in our times if we wanted to talk to anyone who catches our eyes somewhere in a market you would hardly get any time to approach within the few minutes they pass you by”
For an introverted shy guy like him, that was like a ferris wheel that, when it reaches the land, you’ve to unbuckle your seat yourself or you’re in the sky again. Imagine somebody standing there waiting to interact and your nerves are saying it’s too near the ground, shoes’ soles are so damned you’ll surely fall down if you try. And in all those worries you’re sitting on the ferris wheel with a plastic bag in case you puke.
There’s this philosophy in a movie called We Bought a Zoo where Matt Damon goes by this line in his life called “20 seconds of courage.” Whenever he has to take a plunge, he thinks to himself he’s got 20 seconds of courage to go for it.
I think in my time we pass by people too. Then it was the transition of movement — a few steps gone too ahead. We have these mental steps that sometimes cross each other’s, formed by living different lives, different timing.
In my father’s time, missing out on someone was the ferris wheel’s fault, created by too close of a distance and the moment fleeting away, gone never to ever come back. In mine, it’s your own hamster wheel — thoughts too fast, at a speed running for something endlessly, so hard to catch up to each other but running like there’s no tomorrow. And you meet people in flashes, in glimpses. We’re all a bunch of hamsters on wheels and it’s hard to step down to ever go shake hands with the other.
So if I had to describe it, I think he was luckier. At least the wheel was more physical, like a Takeshi’s Castle stunt, like that 20 seconds theory — not a lifetime of spiraling and being over your head over the miles you’ll have to take for a distance that is a lot shorter, for a time that is being a lot nicer and saying to take it sweet.
We as a generation were supposed to be the generational curse breakers, or to dial it down, at least a lot more healed due to more exposure to therapy.
But one thing our parents had was pink looked pink, and orange looked orange.
But for our time, being blue just looks like blues, and white looks like an unknown galleria where you wouldn’t wanna risk going. Red is a flag your friends say to stay away from. Green looks like something you want, but something you might never get.
The screaming colours on our faces, screaming at us, saying to choose one.
And to paint the town with it is too strong of a responsibility.
The damage isn’t in mixing shades or stopping to have a conversation with someone, I’ll tell my dad.
The damage is to leave them separated, or to never stop to take a breath and rest, I’ll tell myself.
If you’re in the 90s or now, if you stop fearing stepping down, the wheels might stop too.