Wanting

I don't really want much. You know, on a day to day basis. In the same way that whilst many may idly dream about Ferraris, private jets, being rock stars, living in mansions, we don't get frustrated and angry that we can't have these things. We have our own level of 'reasonableness'; the point (working downwards) where things stop becoming idle fantasies and we treat them more as realistic goals.  A career?  Marriage?  Children?  I just feel that my own level is so low at the moment, there is nothing I want.

I wrote that first paragraph this afternoon, then, lost for ways to articulate what I was feeling, drifted off to procrastinate elsewhere. It's now 10pm and I've just finished watching "The Real Cabaret" on BBC4. It featured the actor Alan Cumming visiting Berlin to see what survives today of the rebellious decadent spirit of Weimar era cabaret. In the programme he interviewed some of the surviving cabaret artists about their experiences, many of them Jews who had survived the camps. One recalls how the Nazis got them to make a propaganda film about life in the camps to show to the Red Cross; music, smiling, laughing and dancing. Alan Cumming asked the man how he felt about, in so many ways, playing along for the Nazis. He replied that life was so terrible, the future so bleak that you just lived for the moment; the opportunity to play and hear music was something that just couldn't be passed up, for there may well be no tomorrow.

I felt instantly that I knew how he had been feeling at that time, that I understood. This turning off of hope, aspiration and ambition; for him because of the reality that it may well be his last day on Earth, for me because I just can't see myself succeeding at anything ever; I feel incapable of anything but the simplest of tasks, and often even they are beyond me. I simply don't try to push myself, I feel like right now I can't handle the pain of any more disappointment, so the way to cope is to set aside my emotions, my hope and go from day to day feeling neither sadness nor joy, no desire, until I feel strong enough to test my resolve and abilities once more.