His bookcase was filled with books about how to be the best version of himself, to live his best life, about how to be content with his own life, how to accept his humanity and so on.
He had read them all. David was an expert in self-help books. Sometimes he thought that maybe he should become a librarian or something of the sort, at least then he would use all that information for something.
David did not feel like the best version of himself. Crammed in his bedsit, in the suburbs of Dublin, he did not feel he was living his best life. To top it all up, recently he had started to feel quite discontent with his life, or maybe more, he started to feel resentful.
He worked, the same as other people, he did his best, paid his bills, was a good human being, but his life was not becoming any better.
David had found he had an inability to build. He was pretty decent at the day to day, minding things as they rolled along, but David could not forecast, he could not follow through, he was unable to stick to a plan and finish it.
David lived in the moment and, it might be, part of the blame for this was that of some of the self help books crowding his book case. Some of them were very adamant that you need to live in the moment, savor each passing minute, be mindful of your time on this earth.
He really liked the idea. He knew our time was short and could be even shorter unexpectedly. So he lived in the moment, but then the moment came and passed, and David was still there in the moment, unable to budge or change the situation.
Despair and Depression, the two ugly sisters, came to accompany his days taking away even the slightest slither of joy. David felt stuck, glued to a stage of his life he seemed unable to progress from.
David was in pain with Despair and Depression dancing dark dances around him.
One day, David decided that he will not wake up to go to work. What was the point? Depression agreed and lured him back to bed. Later, he decided he did not need food and Despair quietly assented.
There is no hope in dark days, so David just laid there, in his bed, and just stared into darkness.
After a few days, the darkness got so black that he could not even see his own hand when he was trying to look at it. It was so pitch black in David now, that there was nothing to think of or look at.
That is when, in the void that was gaping inside him, David saw himself.
He looked different, he was much older, he was wearing workers’ overalls and was building a brick wall. David laughed to himself, he had no idea of how to lay bricks, that was funny.
Looking at himself David was mesmerized by his ability and the perfect rows of bricks taking shape under his hands. Ridiculous and wonderful at the same time.
His work was interrupted by a shaggy dog running towards him. David had always wanted a dog, but it was out of the question in his tiny bedsit.
Looking at this image of himself, David, somehow, was overwhelmed by a feeling of peace. Maybe he could build, maybe he just needed to learn how. Maybe he could have a dog also. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?
David sat there, filling himself with hope from the image, and when the version of himself he was visualizing took a lunch break and ate some cheese, David felt the pangs of hunger for the first time in a long time. He loved cheese, he will have some smelly cheese too.
That was the beginning of the end for David’s search for meaning. He got better day by day, celebrating each small win while planning his big plans.
He became a mason apprentice, which everyone he knew thought was mad, giving up a good office job for a hard wearing job in construction. David did not care though, he had seen it, he knew what his path was and where he planned it to lead.
In a few years, while rebuilding the wall of a small cottage in the harsh Irish wind of Inishmore, with his dog running around, David had a faint memory that he had been there before, he had seen all those things, he was just not able to pin point when.
‘Just a case of deja-vu most likely!’, He muttered to himself while taking a bite of the piece of cheese he had brought for lunch.