Faire Semblant: A Final Note on Summer

Seven years ago, I did not think I was capable of wanting to stay in anyone’s life forever. However, time has passed on this journey, and I am beginning to think that I am able to love someone to the point of wanting them to stay forever and that there are people whose desire is to have me in their lives for life.

I've always, although I said I hate spring, dread permanence. But I have come to like the feeling of staying for life. This is not a total delusion. I know that, in reality, all our loves end —someone dies. Someone leaves. Someone gets tired. But saying that we would not try, saying that it is too short-lived to be enjoyed, would be mocking our own very lives.

Little one, when were you born? When did you become a teenager? Wasn't it yesterday you got out of the university? How is it that you started balding, how is your hairline receding so fast? What is that stretchy black patch taking over the right side of your face? What are those little lines taking over the eyeliner space? Where are the weak, curvy lines on your lips heading to? What happened to your backbones? Don't you think that the back-aches are occurring too fast for your good? Don't you feel the weight sticking a lot faster now? Don't you sometimes see your eyes twitch a little faster? That you have to look keener to see well? And don't you have to keep a little more budget for your makeup? ?Aren’t you consulting healthy friends for more tips, better supplements? Aren’t you now searching for wrinkle creams? Aren’t your makeup kits made up of treatments, internal and external, to make the illusion of youth stay just a little longer? Aren’t you trying too hard to gain a little more years, a bit more youth, albeit miserly?

By mocking temporality, we mock the very ephemeral nature of our lives. Yet we do not keep love by keeping in touch with our temporality. I think no love can survive by focusing on the tragedy our lives could become in a short while. It is part of the human makeup that even though his life is short, he must seek happiness by looking at it for the long term. That if he ever seeks to enjoy his impermanence, he must see some permanence in them. That, even though he's not sure he’d make it alive until tomorrow, he must plan for it.

And if he happens to need love, which we must all need desperately, he must put his impermanence behind him and assume his godly potential. He must speak with infinity in his heart; “ I love you, and there is a possibility I could love you forever”, “I need you in my life every day”, ?“I think I'd like you to stay”, ?“let's plan the next 50 years of our lives together”. And when he makes the best use of his time now, he must not be just a now person otherwise he would never enjoy his life. He will always look up, seek and never really get. ?He will be a real percher in this percher life. But our goal is not to be a percher, even if, in reality, it's what we are. Our goal is to create a make-believe, a “faire semblant”. To make believe is not the same as to pretend. Faire semblant means everyone is in the show.

There is little guarantee of happiness in the constant fixation on the present moments of our lives. ?Hope keeps us happy on many days, and I think hope is not for those consumed by impermanence. Hope is for those who make some make believe. Hope is for those who believe in tomorrow. Hope is for those who have perfected the greatest showman of our lives, knowing we're not permanent but daring to give colour to life by aspiring to some permanence. To hope is to be happy in the now while creating in our head the probability of future happiness.

So is love. Anyone would find the possibility of love absurd if they cannot create a make-believe world where they live today, tomorrow, and forever with the perfect loves of their lives. We know somewhere in our realities that there is no permanence, but we cannot register this thought and keep our happiness. Hence, it falls on us as ephemeral beings to faire semblant and live forever.

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