When I was young, I remember having watched a film by Andrzej Wajda, titled “Shadow line”. It was based on a novel by Joseph Conrad. The film was not a great success, but it planted in my mind the allegory of life as a struggle to emerge from the shadow into the light, in spite of all the adversities. Conrad’s adversities were the anonymous forces of nature, the oceans, but also the adversities we find inside ourselves.
I’ve begun to suspect that the shadow line will always make part of my life, when I reached maturity. What seemed like a feeble demarcation line, easy to cross once you can sail at full speed, has begun to look like a moving target, a carrot on a stick tied to your harness, which remains always just a few steps distant, no matter how fast you run.
At a certain point I’ve started thinking, that in order to enter the zone of light once and for all, it will be necessary to draw a line how far you want to go, to decide how much is enough. Certainly, it might be a relief, but wouldn’t it also be risky to think that happiness can be identified in a situation, rather than in a frame of mind? And what about the scope of our actions, the time that needs to fly while we perform our daily fatigues? – I don’t see myself basking idly in the sun.
