#120 You Are Bending the Real to Fit What Never Was

There is a peculiar cruelty in the way a person measures his own life against an image assembled from the finest fragments of other people's lives — an image never lived by anyone, never breathed by anyone, yet vivid enough to make the man who aches for it ashamed of what he actually holds in his hands.

And so the meal cools while he photographs it. The embrace pauses while the angle is found. The ocean is not entered until the light confirms the blue will be sufficiently blue. What was once experienced is now performed, and the audience is a phantom.

The deepest trick is this: the man believes the image is a promise of what life could be. In truth it is an accusation. And every time he adjusts himself to escape it, he tightens its hold.