The book…

You know it’s fake. You know it’s fiction…

But it all seems so real.

So you research places, people, things. All nouns that you know will never amount to anything. You scour all your resources for things that never exist and will never exist…all so you can make your life more interesting.

You read and read and read. You look for some connection between you, the book, and the real world. You try to escape into an alternate reality were these things are true. Where a fiction book is non-fiction! Where your best friend in the novel is a real and tangible human being.

But alas, it is all for naught. As you drift back to reality as all searches turn to “No items matching your terms”.

You go back to your mundane life…

Your routine…

Waiting for something interesting enough to happen that your life will be made a book that someone out there will research with as much fervor as you did and their search will come up fruitful. You hope that they will be able to make a connection between you, the book, and their life. So that your efforts were not mistaken.

Eventually…you’ll die. And eventually…your life will be forgotten.

As you lie on your death bed, you remember those nights staying up late searching far and wide for some connection between fiction and reality, you realize how silly it was. You realize that in the time you researched these books, you could have written your own story with twists and turns and hints and clues for other people to find and search just as you did.

Lying in that hospital bed, dreaming of the past and what it could have been. Your children will sit by your bedside, and you’ll begin telling them a story. Of truth, of lies, a story of wonder, and a story of dullness. A story that will someday, posthumously, become a book. Your children will remember it. They will be so stricken with emotion after you finish those last words with your last breath…they will go home and write it all down. Fervently remembering the words, arguing over what you actually said.

Years from that time your book will be long forgotten. It will sit on bookshelves. It will rot in attics. But you hope, in the future, another young curious mind will find your story and become just as obsessed with it as you were with all those other tales.

And so is the tale of a life lived and gone. A boring life, but a life nonetheless.

It is a tale one should be wary of. Do not let your life become boring. Do not search high and low for something that isn’t there. Write that book that you’ve always dreamed of writing. Create something with your life. Do not leave it to your children to write that story for you. Do not leave it to your children to publish your works of art, your literary works. Take chances and press on with your creativity.

Do not let doubt hinder your travels.