I’m not sure what came over me last night. Like I said, I didn’t really do much work. The night was spectacularly quiet, and my black cloud failed to manifest itself. Either that, or my pager had decided to fail, but I woke up once or twice in the middle of the night to make sure it was really still working.

Instead, I surfed the internet, hearkening back to those long ago days when I was an intern, flailing around as night float, doing nothing but sitting in front of the puter, occasionally running in a panic to put out a fire.

And while I kept myself occupied by trying to restart my blog, nonetheless a seeping loneliness crept upon me, and I just felt forlorn.

Maybe it’s just my depression relapsing.

Times like these, it’s hard to remember the Art of Not Wanting. Interestingly, despite being anti-consumerist and anti-capitalist, this sentiment nonetheless has managed to seep into the mainstream.

If you love someone, set them free

This actually echoes the Taoist sentiment that to hold onto something or someone, you must let them go. Or there’s always good ol’ JC, in Luke 9:24, “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it.”

And there’s this verse that S. texted me once, which pretty much sums up what unconditional love is:

I seem to have a penchant for unrequited love. Now, Bram long ago deconstructed this flaw in my character. It’s simply a manifestation of my avoidant personality. Since I know that the situation is impossible, it’s safe. Since I know from the start that I’m going to fail, I don’t have to worry about anything.

It’s a perfect scam. It’s too bad that there’s actually a part of me that wants to be loved in return.

I didn’t run into Don Quixote de la Mancha until I was a senior in high school, primarily through the musical “Man of La Mancha”, but afterwards, through the brilliant novel by Cervantes. I never did finish it in its entirety, though.

I’ve never been called “quixotic” to my face, by I’m sure it must’ve crossed the minds of some of my friends and acquaintances.

But naturally, I grew obsessed with the song “The Impossible Dream”:

Looks like I’m still looking for Dulcinea, doomed to forever love pure and chaste from afar.

After work, though, I grabbed a large cup of coffee and sat in my car by the beach, watching the crashing waves and the surfers who braved them. For some reason—possibly entirely pharmacologically-mediated by the caffeine—my mood lifted up as I drove home. The morning always looks better after some coffee.

Later today, I found myself thinking: there’s got to be an orthogonal solution to this. There’s got to be a way for me to beat my fear of rejection and be able to tell people how I feel about them, without hoping for anything in return.

And I recognize very acutely that if I can’t take care of myself, if I can’t love myself, there’s no way in hell that I can actually love another person. It’s just logistically impossible. If I don’t have all my shit together, how can I possibly be any good for anyone?

And at last, it comes full circle. If I learn to love the world and the people and things in it for who/what they are, and not for what I wish them to be, no matter how fucked up everything is, no matter how evil people can be, unconditionally, whole-heartedly, without expecting anything in return, then maybe I can learn to love myself for what I am, even knowing that I am badly broken and horrendously imperfect. To put it in terms of Darwinism, the only options are to grow, change, or die, and despite how I feel some days, I really don’t want to die. At least not quite yet.

I finally recognize, perhaps years and maybe decades too late, that life is impossible without love. And even if no one in the world loves me, I’ve got to at least love myself. I’ve got to believe that there’s a seed of something great inside of me, it just needs to germinate and take root.

Seeing the world in this light, sure it’s fucked up, beyond belief, and possibly beyond repair, but, to use a contemporary, hackishly trite phrase, it is what it is.

R has often quoted “Buckaroo Banzai” to me: No matter where you go, there you are.

This is not about resting on my laurels. This is, ultimately, about believing that, even though there are a lot of things wrong with me now, I can get better. Slowly, maybe imperceptibly so, but if I make the effort, given enough time, there will be a change. There’s no reason why every day has to be like every other day, fraught with total insanity, mind-crushing depression, and abject desperation. Change will be excruciatingly painful in the beginning, but what have I got to lose if I’m already hurting this bad?

Change for the better is possible. And I can make it happen. If I just keep believing this—and I see no good reason why I shouldn’t—then one day I might actually make something of myself. Not just a guy with a title, with a few pieces of paper that all say I’m over-educated. More than that. It’s possible that some day, I can be a person that’s worth falling in love with.

P.S. anytime I start feeling sorry for myself again, please remind me that I wrote this.