Kiwi!

When saw this video yesterday, I couldn’t shake it off.  I couldn’t believe just how affected I became in just 3 minutes worth of an animated short.  I guess this hapless kiwi reminds me of how many of us, myself included, have chosen to live our lives.  Sometimes we focus on the ONE thing that fate has deprived us of, and we spend all our lives chasing after that ONE unattainable goal, even if it leads to our eventual ruin.  I remember Jim Carrey saying, referring to his failed relationships, that the one thing that is denied of us, cancels out everything else that wasn’t.  So we gloss over whatever blessing, whatever gift, whatever good fortune that was bestowed on us and focus on that which was, at least in our limited understanding, withheld.  Sometimes we chase after love, or success, or wealth, or fame, or recognition, or approval, or lost youth, or whatever pipe dream we chase after that’s always just a few steps ahead, conveniently out of our reach.  And when the unattainable remains unattained, we’re willing to risk anything, whatever the cost, just to reach our goal, or as in the case of the kiwi, a mere simulacrum of his personal holy grail.

I remember the days when I use to chase after love like one would chase after a mirage: just when I thought it was there, it wasn’t.  I seem to see it, it seems reachable, but no matter how far I walk, or how long I stretch my arm, it somehow manages to slip from my reach.  It got to a point where I put myself in considerable risk, whether emotionally or physically or financially, just to find that which evades, which eludes, which steers clear of me no matter how much I yearn to find it.  As ashamed as I am to admit it, each step I took was a step in desperation, to find what I thought at the time, was that one thing that would consummate my until then unaccomplished excuse of a life.  It was the one thing that would open the floodgate of unbridled happiness that would gush forth with roaring fury that would wash away the thick veneer of sadness that has encrusted over me after all these years of unabated solitude.  So in many ways, that was me, that poor little flightless bird, going through all that trouble to ingeniously replicate the one thing it couldn’t do: to fly.

But in the end, what matters is finding happy; whether it means surrendering to the cards that were dealt you, or choosing to go down in a blaze of glory.  I eventually found love, and thank God I didn’t have to jump off any cliff to find it.