"Dad sometimes missed the forest for the trees." "What forest?" "Nothing."
That is one of my favorite parts that I found in Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer. Since I have all these alone time more than I could ever take without being an anxious, over-thinking mess I decided to buy some novels and have managed to actually finish a couple of them. I nearly forgot how much I enjoy reading when I have no other choices. Like all those times ago in high school when we were told to read novels about concentration camps or classic literature and we had to read them because at the end we would have this 'literature discussion' and our grades depended on them so I had no choice but to read them and when I did finish them I realized that I actually enjoyedthem. I was glad that I had no choice but to read them because they turned out to be really good books (I guess that's why they made us read them in the first place, go figure) I even secretly enjoyed the book discussion even more. I find the questions like 'what did you think about the character's decision?' or 'in what way do you think the characters have grown throughout the story?' or 'what do you think the sentences on pg.567 mean?' really interesting. Like I secretly enjoyedanswering those kinda questions, which, when I think about it, is kinda pointless (maybe I should join like a book club when I'm old, since I can't knit or bake or cook). I also love the idioms and implicit words, that looked really confusing at a first glance so you'd have to read it again and again to actually get what they really mean, except not really because idioms and implicit words always have double meanings and different interpretations, depending on the point of view.
So now since I have all the time to myself almost 24/7 (going mad and anxious and just basically a bundle of over-thinking mess) I decided to force myself to read, and to actually finish them (unlike the pile of novels I left hanging, gathering dust in my room back home). I fell in love with the quote above because it describes so much. I didn't know it was an idiom at first, I thought the author came up with it on his own. It was stuck in my head for a few days after I read it, like you know what it means and you can feel it but you can't really put it into the right words.
Missed the forest for the trees.
And I realized that it's basically what I do since I'm able to think and function. I miss the forest for the trees, all the time. I dwell on details, over think on every little thing to a minuscule size, get confused all the time, trying to find meaning behind everything. It's like looking at a picture of a big city on the internet, all glamour and beautiful with city lights and the smell of dreams and big skyscrapers and fancy, shiny people with fancier, shinier clothes but when you're actually inside the city all you see are gums on the street and homeless people on the sidewalk and smokes from the cars that are polluting the air and busy people with busier life who can't be bothered with anything but themselves. You don't even see the big skyscrapers anymore, you see how many people are in it, what are they doing, why are they so busy. You don't see glamour city lights anymore, you see one light bulb is duller than the other, you see generators failing and you wonder how many people out there are walking in the dark without street lamps, how dangerous and unsafe it is to be walking without street lamps at night.
No wonder I just get so depressed all the time. Because nothing make sense.
I missed to look at the bigger picture. The beauty that these scrutinizing details that don't make sense composed to. I realized that if only I had seen the bigger picture when I was 10, when I was really fat and everybody made fun of me and called me names, or when I was 12 when everybody at school seemed to hate me but I could never know what I was doing wrong, or when I was 14 when I was depressed and hated myself more than anything in the world, or when I was 16 when I wanted to be someone I'm really not, or when I was 17 when I finally had some sense of who I am but never really felt good enough, I realized that If only I had seen the bigger picture then, life might not be as horrible and cruel as it seemed to be.
But hey maybe this is the bigger picture - almost 20, more confused in life than ever, the saddest and at the same time happiest as ever been - to which the scrutinizing details that composed it are the broken shades of my inner self.
Whew, if only I could write my reports this passionately.
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