Telegram

Yesterday I received a little letter by mail.

I got a bit excited because, you know, that’s not very common nowadays.

With my eyes closed, I smelled it to see if it had your scent.

I felt a whiff of bureaucracy, and when I opened my eyes, I saw a telegram.

Actually, I didn’t open my eyes; I just squeezed my eyelids.

It’s a metaphor, you know?

If you open your eyes, they deflate, and bye-bye eyes.

Other times, if you open your eyes, you get a bit scared. You’re chilling, watching “this,” and bam! Now they’ve changed the game on you, and you don’t understand anything. It’s similar to what happens in difficult classes. If you start paying attention halfway through, you’ve already missed a ton of stuff, and you’re the fool who doesn’t get it. But if you start paying attention from the moment the teacher begins talking nonsense, the result is different.

Life is more or less like that; the sooner you pay attention to things, the better.

If you start overanalyzing things (as always), writing is something like sending a little letter to your future self. The only difference is that it’s a surprise. One day you’ll find a little text, and when you’re reading it, you’ll say, “oh wow, dude, I wrote this.” It’s a delayed gift. Like checks, but you don’t have to queue with people you don’t want to meet.

Well, back to the little letter. It was a telegram. Telegrams sound like important things. Maybe it gives someone else a bad feeling because there are also dismissal telegrams. There are also resignation telegrams, and maybe it sounds like freedom to you because you had to fill one out if you ever left a place you hated.

I once sent a resignation telegram. Actually, twice. One when I had to leave the job due to time constraints. The other was also a resignation, but I sent it to myself. It said something like:

“If we’re not going to do things right, then let’s not do them.”

And well, I got a bit scared by that and had to get my act together. Someone in the back is surely asking, “What does doing things right mean?” That’s up to each person, dude. Many people complain about things they can change. What a drag, right? Life is already quite difficult without you acting all tough and making it harder. Doing things right is doing the things you know you have to do and not messing around.

You could say it’s a mix of doing and not doing. Doing the things that will make your life a bit easier tomorrow. And not doing the stupid things that will make your life even harder tomorrow (or right now).

Pretty simple, right? Fuck no. But well, you do what you can. With what you have.