Parallel Hearts

 Perfection. It looks beautiful from afar, no? People lean closer. To look. To admire. They clap, smile, whisper, admire. Perfection is a Crown. A crown that everyone wants to wear.  But always remember. A crown is heavy.  It may look like glory but it's often nothing more than pressure pressing into your skull. At the end of the day, Perfection is not a gift; it is a performance. A script you cannot abandon. A role you cannot refuse.  Though, its all worth it, no? - people applaud!! No one wonders why your hands are shaking when the curtains fall. No one sees how difficult it is. No one can tell how every flaw becomes a sin. No one- No one at all wants to see how every mistake turns into a crime. The can't- no... they don't want to see how perfection doesn't allow you to be loved- It allows you to be admired... and Admired is such a cold, distant thing. 

  "Mine has been a life of much shame. I can't even guess myself what it must be to live the life of a human being" - Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human As we may know, Loneliness is often Romanticized- the writer staring at a blank page. But in Dazai's No longer Human, loneliness is not a mood; it is a philosophy- a condition of being. It is not the absence of other, but the disconnection from ones self that makes existence unbearable. Yozo Oba, the protagonist, is not a man who became 'lonely'. He was born with the 'wrong kind of soul' in the first place- one that sees too much, feels too deeply. What a pity. He laughs, He performs, he adapts. His life is a series of masks. But the tragedy of performance is that the actor Will eventually forget who he was before the play began. And when the play is over... Guess what remains? Nothing! That's the life an 'actor' has to live.  People think loneliness comes from being unloved. But no-no-no. Yozo...