In a hurry!

Dear Guy,

In several of our letters we have dug into your past, so I thought we could have a closer look into the present and how you could shape the future, or better, your future. I will not give up to write about what lays behind you but with this letter I want to increase the speed, because lately you said you were in a hurry.

So a quick reminder; since you were born you can’t complain about a dull life although I can imagine that on certain moments being more at ease would have been preferably comfortable.

Even when a ‘regular’ life was offered to you, albeit I’m not sure that happened, you were always looking for new challenges, new adventures, new friendships, new love, and new life. Most of the time this search for new experiences meant unrest and a lack of comfort but the latter was never bothering you as long you were able to master it.

One artist, we both know his name (*) once said that if he had not been an artist he probably would have been a gangster. Not sure that if you didn’t organize yourself as you did you would have reached both those states but you certainly did find a method to survive within this world.

The last two years you have suffered of a low quality of life, even you didn’t know it. Only after your last surgery you became aware that something had seriously been wrong, and this has a great impact on your actual viewpoints and beliefs.

I know that you don’t hesitate to change your opinions if strong irrefutable arguments are presented to you but you will never renounce to some fundamental values that you have acquired during all those years. This does not mean that you are flawless, far from it. But on those mistakes, you were always accountable and people can question you and condemn you while you will do everything to repair.

“Losing loved ones” because of your mistakes and wrong judgments is probably the worst experience you have faced and that is something that haunts you. You consider this disquieting torment a necessary penance here as you don’t believe in a hereafter. You are right, it is too easy to ask for pardon in a confessional as no one can pardon you but those you were harming.

“Losing loved ones” is unbearable and that has been a guideline throughout your life. It has been playing a role in all your decisions and shaped your behavior. While you were yearning for human warmth you were building an invisible border. Whomever was crossing the line was rejected, not to mention a few exceptions. You were a master in creating distance with those you loved the most, being afraid of losing them while your conduct was resulting into the same.

As you are in a hurry I will not dig deeper but maybe read those last phrases a second time.

During your flight to Rwanda this week you were thinking that being in a plane is probably the most vulnerable situation of dependence one can experience. You can stop and step out of a bike, a car, a bus, a train, even out of a boat but at a height of twelve kilometers you have to wait to leave the plane after it has reached its destination. One can have deep anxious feelings about that situation but one can also enjoy this out of control and go into a state of surrendering devotion. I know that you have the same state of mind when you are going into surgery and you always have something to smile about when they will stun you.

During this interlude between departure and arrival your life is organized by a third party, and you are welcoming this as an ultimate moment of rest, as for a while your life is on halt.

Traveling has become more tiring for you than before but at the same time it is a necessity for you to survive, a lifeline, a moment of dreaming and planning without being able to start to execute your plans immediately. And if those plans don’t survive the hours and days after the intermission they probably were not meant to be implemented.

Deep within you, you know that your Rwandan adventure is slowly coming to an end. It does not come from unrest, at the contrary, you have planned and implemented with a regularity that you have rarely showed before, but based on a lifelong experience. I remember that once you said you wouldn’t regret the decision to go to Rwanda but rather the one not to follow your instinct. You still not give up your dream but you are aware of the difficulties you still have to face to make the dream alive. Those who promised you that things would go smoothly didn’t fool you, neither then neither now, as otherwise others who are probably more experienced than you would have brought those plans to a higher level before you.

I understood that you are convinced being in a hurry. As a bucket list will only increase the idea of the state of emergency, you think you find yourself in, you have decided to face life day by day but with strict self-imposed deadlines.

The time of prophecies is over. You consider your future as being too short for endless contemplations, albeit yesterday was as long as whatever day next year and as dangerous as every day since you were born.

The last four months you were living like a nomad, more than ever before. Maybe not so much physically but in your thoughts, feelings and emotions.

I guess you are still in that state of mind.

I guess this is why you are in a hurry.

Although the unknown mattresses and hospitality were given to you unconditionally, sleeping in your own bed now feels like a deliverance, a return to a state of independence. Home is where your bed is, and you have always decided yourself about that place!

And when the unrest starts at the end of the night, when thinking overrules the sleep, your own bed is the place to plan and reorganize what is left.

As you feel some stories are not finished, you told me you need to break out, to visit some places and reconnect with people, revive experiences, seeing long forgotten landscapes, discover new ones and smell forgotten scents.

Everyday I’m asking myself, Guy, why are you in a hurry?

Is it because of a ghost haunting me here and now or just because I feel my time is limited?

If I find a beginning of an answer I will write you again.

Yours, always.

Guy.