Yesterday I heard this song and I really liked it. I looked it up on youtube and there it was. Ready for me to play as many times as I wanted. All I had to do was push the button over and over again.
When I was young, I used to listen to the radio very often. I always had a favourite song for a certain amount of weeks. I would hear it for the first time and my ears would sharpen. "I like this song," is what I would think. And then the next time it played, I would be thrilled. "There's that song again I liked so much!" And over the next couple of weeks I would sometimes turn on the radio and silently wish for the song to be played. I craved for it to be played. Begging inside my head: "Please, please, play my favourite song." And then, whenever I could hear the first notes, it would be magical. I would jump up and down and dance and sing out loud in my room. I captured that moment, because I knew I was lucky to hear it and it was going to be done in a few minutes. And then I'd have to wait until the next time it would come along.
Sometimes it can be a real blessing to get what you want instantly.
But something gets lost there as well. It's like we don't know how to desire anymore. To want something so bad that is out of reach. To get to know your desire, to sit with it, to taste it on your tongue, to let your hands slide over it in your dreams. There a physical pain almost, an aching.
It's uncomfortable. And we don't like that. We don't have time to sit with our desires. We seek instant gratification and build our world around it using the internet, 24 hour shops, modern communication. But not only our world. Also our dreams. We think it's nonsense to dream of something you can never have. A dream is something to pursue, something to be made real, something to go after. But what about the dreaming itself? What about the desire? We believe people who fail to live their dreams, who's desires are not fulfilled, are losers. Because in this world we can have whatever we want, all we have to do is reach out and grab it. We are responsible ourselves for the pursuit of our dreams. I even believe that for a great deal of the time. And I end up blaming myself for being a loser.
A few weeks ago I met this wonderful, beautiful girl. She's eleven years old. And she asked me: "Do you want to know what my deepest wish is?" I answered "Yes, please." And she said it was kind of silly, but her deepest wish was to be able to fly. "Not in an airplane or a machine," she added, "But with wings, real wings growing from my back." And I was struck. I suddenly remembered having the same wish when I was her age. I sometimes dreamed about it at night, soaring above the houses feeling so free, so liberated. But also being awake. I would imagine how it would feel to soar, to swim the sky. I had forgotten all about that dream. I looked at the girl in admiration for being able to dream without boundaries. I suddenly understood that dreaming and desiring is not necessarily something that appeals to your responsibility to seek gratification. Dreaming and desiring can be in fact: the point.
