New beginnings :: 1st prompt
Life is an odd thing, and so is our perception of time and how it passes. A moment can seem a lifetime, and a lifetime can seem a moment. ‘Where did our time go?’ We’ll all wonder at least once in our lives, looking back on our histories to try and fit the missing puzzle piece in that would justify who we are now, in the present. A split second decision in our past could blossom into something totally unexpected in our future, and we’ll feel that lifetime when it happens.
Some people believe that our perception of time is our subconscious trying to give deeper meaning to our decisions. That second, moments before you're mauled by a beast, your brain screaming to turn and run, or find some kind of weapon, and the reaction it causes- it determines whether you live or die. The twenty years you spent behind laboring away in a pitiful life, wishing you had decided to take the time to travel rather than picking the ‘safe route’ felt like no time had passed. You felt older, sure, but some believe that it’s your mind telling you that you’ve failed, that your perception is punishing you for your failure to explore your horizons.
Personally I think it’s a load of bullshit.
Your mind does weird things when you’re stressed or excited. When you’re pumped full of adrenaline or the blood drains from your cheeks in terror. I don’t think the reason we perceive moments in our lives as longer than they are or shorter than they should be is because of some subliminal message our brain is trying to send us, telling us we’re fucked if we do or fucked if we don’t.
It doesn’t matter what your decision in those moments are. One way or another, you’re screwed. That creature threatening your life? You turned and ran, but the beast followed you home. More than one person died. You fought, but you were vastly overpowered, and you died anyway.
You decided to travel to a foreign land; you still ended up at your soul crushingly boring life back in your boring home.
How we feel these moments in our lives isn’t to give us time to react, or to lament on time lost-
It’s to provide our minds with something to reflect on, later. If you survived the beast’s attack, you look back and go through ten different scenarios where you thought you could’ve prevented what happened. You think ‘it happened only in an instant, but it felt like years! Surely I could’ve done something.’ But the reality of it?
Nothing would’ve changed. It doesn’t feel like hour pass in a single second when the act takes place in real time. You can look back on it later and feel that way, sure. But the reality of the situation is that in that moment, you were fucked either way. The reverse is also true.
Ten years can feel like nothing, but only if you look back on it and think so. Those three hundred and sixty-five days sure felt long as hell when you were living them.
Reflection and perception go hand in hand, and make our lives seem strange and deceptive, giving us things to think about that don’t exactly make sense, but we’re curious about anyway.
Dreams are a good example.
Have you ever had a dream where you’ve died? Or almost died? The memory stuck with you, I bet. It stuck with you and you couldn’t shake it, no matter how you tried. You look back on this memory of a dream and wonder how in the world such a thing could’ve taken place in the short span of time between the time you went to bed at night, and woke up in the morning.
Of course that’s usually a nightmare, and people like to dwell on those.
Now imagine a… happy dream, I guess. When you wake up, more often than not it’s nothing more than a sweet feeling in the back of your mind. You can’t exactly recall why you feel like that or where it came from, but you relish in the moment before continuing on your way. You’re not sure why you can’t remember that split second of bliss, but it’s alright. You feel like the rest of the day will go your way, no matter what.
Honestly I’ve never had one of those dreams, which brings me to the point of all this.
How we perceive time and our decisions has no bearing on what our fates are- reality twists to these perceptions, because our perception is our reality. The realities of time, of our dreams, of our memories, intertwine to make us who we are.
But then again, what is perception when you’re getting the shit beat out of you? Can you force your mind to feel happiness in place of terror? Can you will away pain, simply by refusing to let it enter your ‘reality’?
For most people, I guess they’re escapes from their usual reality. Their present lives that they endure day in and day out.
For me, they’re nothing more than a continuation of this bullshit excuse for a life.
Sometimes I’m glad I was born as a being of darkness. Most times I despise it- for in my nightmares, the light is not only the enemy; it is my salvation.
I can’t perceive my life of anger and hatred away. I tried once, but that hadn’t worked out that well. These days, I embrace it. I am a being born of these emotions.
I am who I am because of the reality I was dealt, and as I stand here separated from but eternally bound to those I despise. I will continue to keep my reality under my control, without any idiots to keep me from getting what I want.
The pathetic loser I fought here in the Graveyard is one of those said idiots, but I swear for as long as wind howls like the cries of the dead souls scattered like shattered memories in this wasteland, I will ensure our destinies end as they should. A new beginning for all things will lay in our wake, just as my birth was the beginning of our path.
Golden eyes blink open, staring up at the dark and cracked ceiling of the rundown apartment he lived in. Dreams rarely came to him in place of nightmares, but tonight it had felt surreal and life like, as though the scene of him standing over a destroyed battlefield ages old had been real...
It felt as though no more than moments had passed during the dream, but as he pulled him to his feet to start the new day; he felt like there had been more to it than he what met his inner eye.
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