As we find ourselves amidst the cold winter-snow on a dark January night, it is sometimes tempting to look back on warmer days. For even as the cold winds with its frozen fingers claw at the walls of our house, a reflection of what was comes to mind. A brush of your old memories suddenly strike you, when you are comfortably sitting in your favorite chair, sipping joyously from a good glass of single malt whiskey. Suddenly you start to remember….remember how things was before…before all of this, before you knew. Knew of how great life can be, and how you have cheated yourself from it in the past. You take a deep breath, and listen for a while to the calm music playing in the background. While tilting your head backwards, you rest your eyes in to the nothingness of the room, and think for yourself:
Once, when I was a young boy, I was brought up to be good and kind. I had to learn all the proper ways of viewing life, what to look for and how to act upon it. As a young boy, I was though what it means to serve, serve others and to put their needs above my own, always. The lessons were strangely easy to swallow, because they seemed so right at the time. I was no different from any other boy in school, we were brought up by the same principles after all.
And I dared to dream, dream of one day finding a woman of whom I could one day spend the rest of my life with. This woman would be kind, and thoughtful, and with a smile to die for. Her joyful nature would lift the spirits of everyone around listening, filling them with laughter and hope on even the grayest of days. Such a woman would be the greatest treasure of any man who could call her his own. A woman of such caliber is one you could always trust to be faithful, respectful (to herself as well as to others), and most of all honest…honest about who she was, for the world to see. Such a woman could indeed be capable of loving a man, and so in turn you could love her back, with all your hearts content.
As I grew up and gradually became a man, I naturally sought to search for such a woman. There was a thought that my life could not properly start before I had found her. And so, I started to mirror every woman that came in to my life, being ever so serving and dutiful, kind and self-sacrificing, always wanting her to feel relaxed in my company. Perhaps she was the one? The one of whom I could spend the rest of my life with?
But I quickly found out that the world was different from what I had been thought in my adolescence. The women where cruel and also bored with my chivalric behavior towards them….they soon lost interest. How could this be I asked myself? Ever have I been told to treat every woman like the fairest of princesses, to be polite and courteous, a gentleman in every manner! But no woman would hear of such a man, they would not even take a second glance to the very place he was standing. And I was devastated….everything I had become was wrong!
Amidst this dark revelation, a beam of light suddenly shone up my depressive surroundings. There could be hope still. I just had to change my ways! Because I still had hope, hope of finding that woman I had dreamed of as a boy. And so I started to change my ways, becoming the very thing I had aspired not to be. I strengthened by body trough long intensive hours at the gym, until I was fit. I sold my soul working in an office job day and night until I became what one may call rich. I worked on my social skills until I became confident around all kinds of people. Indeed, I thought myself to be changed….a better man!
After this turning point, I never found myself lacking in the woman’s department again. But I started to wonder….why was I not interesting when I was a normal guy, with normal means and a normal attitude towards women? Suddenly now I had become interesting and fun to be around. Something did not add up….have I not remained the same man all along?
I gradually started to see women for what they were as time went by. For each month the picture I had been given as a child began to crack and disappear. Women were not the happy, easygoing joy-givers I always thought them to be. There was no laughter from their voice, and from behind their smile you could always see a glimpse of something…sinister. Their narcissism overshadowed the little compassion they actually had, the word “faithful” was alien to them as they had all been cheating on a former boyfriend of theirs. Regarding honour and self respect? Well, all of them had slept with so many men in their past, that even a professional hooker would blush by hearing the exact amount.
And suddenly it all came clear to me. I could see it now for all it was worth. These women are not the kind of woman that came before. No, this is an entirely new breed of woman, the kind that will do exactly what they want to do whenever they want to do it. These women do not show any restraint regarding the less flattering qualities of their gender, of course not! They were princesses, and princesses ought to do what she wants to do, with no remorse. She is narcissism reincarnated! I turned my eyes from them in disgust…slowly walking away as the dreams of my youth shattered down around me like rain from a heavy cloud.
And so at the end I find myself here, in my chair, in my house, with a newly poured glass of whiskey, smiling as I take the cork back on the flask. I am happy now. I once dreamed a dream which was not possible. A few times I almost got trapped, but luck and good fortune sought otherwise. I know now that for a man, going his own way is the only thing he can do. There is really no other way to go….but by God! what a glorious way to go nonetheless! To live for yourself, decide for yourself, dream for yourself, speak and think for yourself….all these thing are the traits of a free man! And to live in such a freedom, is truly a blessing in itself!
The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal - Aristotle (384 - 322 BC)
onmyway 4 years ago.
