“Love life beyond meaning? Yes, for sure” ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky, Karamazov brothers
When I was young, there was a special time at dusk when old sodium lamps lit up the streets, turning the world from saturated to purple-yellow, and it always saddened me.
One day my dad asked me why I was so quiet that evening. I’m not sure what to answer – how does he feel?
The evening had just begun and the ditch outside was beginning to cool. Looking out the window, I could see clouds of human breath.
“Let’s go find ice cream in the village,” he said.
I was sitting in his back wheel and the yellow world was fading. People on the streets have lost their color. The store is about to close, but we are on time.
After a while, we were standing outside the store directly under a lantern. My dad is holding his bike in the snow, enjoying his ice cream with a splash of water.
“Locker him?” He said. (“Delicious?”)
I’m not sure, but it felt like he was saying at the time, “We’re both feeling this way, aren’t we?”
On Staying Light-Hearted
I am thirty years old and it has been ten years since I lost my father to cancer. Looking back on growing up, it feels like an evening when sodium lights illuminate the streets: with time, the world will inevitably lose some color.
Broken heart, bad decisions, dreams that will never come true, words that are not said, too late to say. More things to look for, bitter or stuck somewhere along the way. Time leaves its mark one way or another and no one can escape it.
How do we endure the reality of this life? And how can a person resist color, resist bitterness, and be childish? Is it possible?
Growing up, I watched people face this problem in different ways: sticking to a career, projecting it on a partner, turning to a scholar, or just making yourself gray. Others are drunk with the idea that with enough effort they can make a difference in the world.
I subscribed to the next article, promising myself in the quest to keep calm as I grew up.
At the age of twenty, I would lose myself in philosophy, art, motivation, trade, travel, filmmaking and writing. I like to be busy, be nervous, go to bed late, try to learn new things, new ideas, new ideas, things to deal with bitterness. It feels like finding meaningful answers counted as meaningless integrity of most suffering in life.
My first art instructor at art school one day said to me, “Being in love in this world is the hardest thing you can do.” I did not fully understand her at the time, but like most of what she said, it would mean years later.
Throughout my twenties, I looked pretty good from the outside. But even in times of real good life, the question remains unanswered: How can we keep the light in our minds while carrying the weight of a chronic past?
The more I discovered, the more the world seemed to get worse. It got me to a point where the feeling of the sodium lamp stopped being something that only happened in the evening and became something that was always there. The color does not return in the morning.
There was a time when I was completely tired of my familiar world – or at least that was how it felt. All the answers I found made the world more gloomy than I could find. And somewhere in a single color stretch, an idea kept coming back – not as planned, but as a kind of guarantee: the door was there if I wanted to. That I can walk out.
During that time I spoke to a woman who was light-skinned and always seemed to be smiling. She has a single box that does not have red bushes, manure or Earl Gray. Instead, she has Namastea, empatea, tearapy and so on. In fact, she forgot the actual taste and we laughed and laughed.
We said a lot of things and every time she reacted with a funny smile, a weird face never denied the weight of our conversation, but always chose the light.
The steam of my tea flowed gently upwards. Outside, the snow was dripping. A young tree began to flower.
“Aren’t you an ordinary person who comes and goes as much as you can? So why not keep exploring? It’s certainly not an easy lifestyle, but who cares?” She said.
“Do not care, right?”
Then I realized that in my search for answers, I had stopped looking for questions.
Unknown
Strangers are friends of children – until the child grows up and becomes his enemy, causing heartache and despair.
That despair led me to the depths, and in that depth I found that I had nothing to lose. And if I have nothing left to lose, I can go anywhere and do anything.
Strangers who have become my enemies suddenly have only one place left to breathe life.
So I went for it.
My love and I retreated for two months in northern Spain back on the Camino de Santiago because we wanted to know how “hugging a stranger” really felt. First, we have to face constant disaster because we do not see where we are going.
But with enough deceleration, nothing terrible happens. In contrast, ignorance gradually ceases to feel like something to watch out for, and we find ourselves feeling lighter, freer, and more present.
We then left Amsterdam completely and moved to Campo of Panama because we wanted to know what was going on in real isolation, far from annoying and familiar.
In that loneliness, I found myself confronted with everything I was overwhelmed by: not wanting to accept things as they were, wanting to “become something” in a world of sadness and a crazy desire to understand it all.
Find your ice cream.
Knowing my father through the stories of others, it turns out that he struggled with existence as I have. I just never saw it. After all, he was Dad: a man who knew everything and could fix everything.
But on that special night, I think he knew what I was going through. And he did not try to fix it, explain it or interpret it as forgetfulness.
Instead, he got on his bike and rode us to the ice cream parlor.
Now I think a lot about that, not about the ice cream itself, but about refusing to let “win” alone.
He did not fight the sodium lamp or pretend that the world does not change color. He had just decided that it was not enough reason to skip the vanilla with a sprinkle.
Another evening, sitting in the sunshine of my love in Panama, looking up from the Volcano Mountains, and the day gradually turned into night, I found myself
“How are you?”
I realized that at the time, I was living in the same place where my father used to live. Not above the world does not oppose it, but inside it enjoys the good things around the people I love.
About Samuel van Keeken
Samuel van Keeken is a Panama-based Dutch writer, artist and filmmaker where he co-founded. Same worldwide: Home for writing articles, works of art and relaxation. At its heart is the same approach, which is the framework for cultivating existing courage and meaningful activities in daily life.
