The Ache

I ache.

It's physical. A burning need behind my solar plexus, coiling tightly, sending heat radiating up my chest and down to my groin.

What do I ache for?

We live, we love, we fight wars, we grant lives and we take them away (how people fail to realize how enormous that concept is, I'll never understand). We orbit and oscillate around and into each other like an infinitely vast kaleidoscope, turned towards the blazing sun.

So complex, so wondrous...

So utterly, horribly mundane...

...More.

That's my ache, my need, I think. For more...

More life, more experiences. More everything.

Perhaps I'm too young, to inexperienced to be permitted this desire. I shouldn't have it - not when there's a whole world to be explored, a vast planet teeming with life to taste, see and touch. There's more to see here than can ever be seen, more to do than can ever be done (as Elton John so quaintly put it).

The paradox is unbearable. My life offers me more than I can ever handle, but it's still not enough...

I am the Wandering Jew – but without God, without redemption and, worst of all, without immortality. One day I'll grow old. My bones will become brittle like so much petrifying fossil. My voice will grow feeble and my eyes murky. And on my deathbed, I fear (I know), unless I've despaired so much over my failing body that death will come as a relief, that my final words will be ”Not enough...”

It will never be enough. Not this world, this reality.

Magic, perhaps...

I think that's what I ache for...

I ache for more than what this reality can offer. My imagination isn't so much a prison as it is imprisoned, bound and gagged by the limits of my consciousness. I want dragons and witches and things lurking in the corners. I want Batman soaring overhead and aliens landing in my backyard. I want new frontiers to press, impossibilities to make possible. I want the fantastic, the unimaginable - and I want it real. My dreams are only a temporary and inadequate fix. Then maybe, just maybe, I will become satisfied.

I know that there are wonders in this world. There are sights that take your breath away, challenges that, once faced, can sustain one's pride for the rest of one's life. Maybe I'm just deluding myself. After all, what do I know. I certainly haven't experienced much of these things yet. They could be more than satisfactory.

But there is still that ache in my gut, and I don't feel it nearly as much when I picture the mountaintops of Himalaya, forbidding in their purity, or the uncharted jungles of the Amazonas as when I hear a song telling of other worlds, or hear tales of exploits and adventures whose greatness I will never be able to touch except in my dreams. This mundane reality will only provide me with the mundane wonders it is capable of creating. I fear that I will always seek the next high, and always find it lacking to the ideal my imagination so cruelly presents behind my eyes.

And I realize this is in no way new. I have absolutely no doubt that comments on this text would be confessions of similar thoughts (I'm almost as sure that these comments will now not appear, just so that you, my friends, can be contrary and prove me wrong. But you will think it, and that's what matters).

Although I cannot lie. Sometimes I'm content. When I play make-believe with my friends or see how my love for them and my family is returned, I'm happy. I can profess my dreams and ambitions to them, grand delusions all, and feel a semblance of peace. I know that I look forward to everything that my life has to offer, good and bad.

Still, I believe that one lifetime is not nearly enough for me to sate the need for, well, everything that can be offered or taken for me to experience. There will always be that nagging feeling that I'll always tread on walked paths, see sights already seen, sate hungers already provided for. I don't want worlds tempered by ignorance, believe me. Traveling back to the dark ages hold no appeal to me. I just want...more.

I guess I'm greedy like that.