There was a friend in whose life a curious tension threaded every choice he made. Both parents, in a way, kept him from chasing unhappiness the moment it appeared, not out of cruelty but out of a stubborn belief that a smoother path could be carved for him. They imagined a future where his talent would bloom in a garden watered by security, where the dream of becoming a poet who bears a curse would not be tethered to poverty or struggle. As a child, he was handled with a quiet, almost ceremonial care. As a teenager, professionals were brought in to steady him through the rough patches, not to dampen his brushstrokes but to steady his hand. As a young man, the doors of prestigious schools opened, and with them the promise of a respectable vocation, a stable life, and a prosperous, crime-free adulthood. Later they secured him an apartment, a key in the door to independence, with no mortgage weighing him down from the start of his new life.
With parents who believed in protection as a form of guidance—he admitted this even as the strain of their expectations sat heavy at a funeral home, with the dead still warm in the room—there was always a cost to happiness. The weight of their care pressed down, a constant reminder that feeling unhappy felt almost like betraying a parental oath.
“Of course,” the speaker said, feeling a twinge of envy, when his friend poured out private grievances in the quiet after the service.
“For me,” the friend continued, “I wish I could be a touch of an alcoholic or a hint of a drug addict, perhaps even a little suicidal, like any self-respecting poet. Yet the very thought of splintering the life his parents built with all their effort fills me with guilt and restraint.”
The other man nodded, choosing silence over argument, unwilling to disturb the delicate balance that had kept the family at peace for so long.
“Yes,” he finally said, choosing words with care, “it seems wrong to argue when the effort behind your education and your dreams still shines so brightly in their eyes.”
He added softly, trying to break the heaviness, “Maybe you could be a secret poet, signing under a pseudonym, so you can keep your public life and private truth separate.”
The friend hesitated, then asked, “So why would I need to hide what I do for a living?”
“Because you don’t want them to suffer with you,” came the quiet reply, careful and practical as always.
They stood in thoughtful stillness for a few minutes, listening to the distant clatter of the city. Then the speaker, with a touch of mischief born from malice, suggested that perhaps happiness itself had become a burden, and now that the parents were gone, the door might finally open for the poet to pursue his art without causing harm to others.
“Anyone?” the friend asked, a wry smile catching in the corner of his mouth, as if testing the limits of the idea.
“What about your wife and children?” the other man replied, a note of tenderness returning to his voice. “They gave you a life worth living, not a life of quiet despair.”
In that moment, the two men embraced awkwardly, then drifted apart, each retreating to their own world of music and memory, leaving the story lingering in the air rather than in the room. The moment felt less like an ending and more like an invitation—to consider what freedom might look like when one’s past commitments and future dreams share the same breath.