Bottomless_pit_of_wants by Shanooha Mansoor -- Hilath's Home Page

Silent and dark, in the dead of the night I peer out at the sky, dotted with millions of stars, imagining that someone is gazing back at me. I yearn to go out and lie on the grass, with their blades caressing me, like thousands of fingers, the cool night air enveloping me, stinging my face with its coldness, prickling my body, its smell taking over me intoxicating me, leaving me yearning for more and more. My parched lips cracked and open for a single drop of dew, as though it will quench my thirst for eternity, a thirst so great and consuming that I feel sometimes as though I am drowning in it.

The whole world silhouetted against the night sky, soft halos surround them, lacking details and definitions, a time when true beauty really shines, with the sharp edges, the soft contours, the smell, the warmth, and emotions that vibrate in the dead of night, beauty at its purest and most primitive form. I see the world as I’d never seen it before, touching me at the very core, but that somehow doesn’t seem enough. I’ve got a yearning, a yearning for something more. It creeps up on me, even at the moments at which I am most at peace with myself. I try to coax myself, to delude it, to make myself believe that this is as good as it gets.

But there’s always a ‘but’, or an ‘if about what I could and would do, an insatiable desire to have more than I get, to do more than I could. First it was about a toy, then friendships, then about love, about a career, about money, something or other was always there, something I wanted and when I got that it somehow was never enough; the grass on the other side truly seemed greener and more lush, the trees in that pasture seemed to grow with fruits much more bigger and juicier than on mine. Even the shadows looked bigger and intense. Someone else always seemed happier than me, more content; they seemed to know the secrets of love and life and I was left wanting that, changing from one thing to the other, searching, wanting, my mind always in turmoil, my soul in tatters. I was nothing but a bottomless pit of wants.

Somewhere along the road I had lost touch with being content, with being what I was. There always seemed to be attainable heights, greater pleasures, a bit further I could push myself. I could not live, not happily anyway, for I was blinded by my wants, when I could very well have done with all I had, all that was mine. I could have been one of those people smiling, a soul at peace, that free spirit without fretters that bound me to my miserable self. Sigh!

But, I am what I am, and I guess I will console myself and blame it all on human nature once more (sure way to block that accusing voice in my head!). After all it is true, that we really are bottomless pits of wants without a clue as to where we begin and where our wants end.

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@ “You are right: a human being is never satisfied with his or her wants (The grass is always greener in somebody else's field.) I have everything that I could ever hope to have but still I yearn for more. Maybe this is what drives humans towards more perfection and survival? I guess... I think your prose was more verse. For instance, the first half of the article read like a poem, and I thought you were experimenting on how to write an article in verse form rather than prose. I once read a short story written all in verse form. It was like one big poem but very nice. It was called ‘Frenchtown Summer’ by late American author Robert Cormier. Perhaps you should read that book. Your short story also reminded me of the poem ‘Drummer Hodge’ by Thomas Hardy. In that poem, Hodge is a drummer in the British army who is sent to Africa to fight in the first world war. There he dies, an insignificant soldier, in a war that was none of his business. He is buried on a mound, his grave unmarked, and his spirit feels lonely as he looks up at the sky every night, his companions being only the stars. I was very moved by that poem. So I was also quite struck by the subject matter you brought up in this short story.”--Hilath Rasheed, Maldives, 11 Nov 2004