No Such Thing

When you really get to thinking about it, life seems impossible.

Everything about reality feels surreal upon a more thorough analysis. How we’re even here to begin with. How we can think on the absurdity of our being here. How we can formulate our imperfect thoughts into words and put them into text.

There have been moments where questions like ‘why the hell is any of this here’ have left me in a place of existential angst and confusion, but after a good period of rest and persistent relaxed living I find myself only in a place of wonder over a question like that.

It’s a different perspective for me. Perhaps it’s a temporary one, but it’s certainly my current one. And I think wherever stress can be mitigated in life, that new approach should be embraced if the stress itself can no longer be sublimated.

I’m writing this shortly after waking up, so I’m in a place between awake and dreaming, which only compounds the surreal emotions I’m feeling. And I remember reading a long time ago that that was largely how Murakami went about writing most of his surreal feeling stories. He’d get up, half awake, sit as his desk, fade in and out of consciousness, and whenever he got the urge he’d put down something extra strange to the paper without holding back. Without worrying about making it perfect right then and there.

I love writing. But I often find myself combing back over things I’ve written and ripping them apart before they’ve ever been ready by anybody else. A tendency I’m sure most people who write have. Not necessarily an awful trait, but it becomes detrimental to productivity if it bleeds into a state of perfectionism.

Which calls to mind a personal favorite Murakami quote that has always stuck in my mind since first I read it.

“There is no such thing as perfect writing just as there is no such thing as perfect despair.”

There’s beauty in imperfection.