Focus

Someone will probably accuse me being time to time unfocused with my writing. This I can only blame my Finnish literature teacher at lycée, the dreadful Mr. T; compared to him the French Revolution’s Régime de terreur was just a bunch of Sunday school boys. But this scary man had a soft spot for me as I in my eager to get good notes had found out what kind of essays he liked and wrote accordingly. He loved abstract writing where no sentence had anything to do with the previous or the following one, just like my blog. So I wrote a lot of weird essays that he loved to read in front of the class and slobbering how wonderful life would be if everybody wrote like me (the water running out of his mouth and landing on my essay made me usually to tell him just to keep it as a gift and dedication). My class mates didn’t understand a word, neither did I. But I had understood that the less I understood of my own writing, the higher the note will be. I remember particularly one essay causing more eye rolling amongst my class mates than usual, it started with something like; “I take a Roman helmet on my head. Slowly I walk to the pathologic department. I am dying of my profound sadness.” What the hell was that about? I still don’t know, but it certainly was unfocused and worth a very high note.

Mr. T. loved to play God and the last school day he told us how the future would turn out to be for us. Everybody else ending up with a mediocre life, I had a great future ahead me; I would become something. But he was no God, just a bad prophet. Everybody else in my class became rich and famous; I ended up being nothing. Well, Mr. T. got the thing part right, but I never attend class reunions.

Sometimes I wonder if I should have asked Mr T. HOW I will become something. But I have always exercised the art of not asking too much if a sentence or statement can be interpreted in my favor. Like a year ago before going on my summer holiday to France. Looking at my exhausted and burn out face (what you are is not important, but how you look), my boss told me to go out and eat a good dinner in France with my husband. “But how much can we spend” my husband kept asking. “I am not a fool, I am not gonna ask, it is for me to decide what is a good restaurant”. So I booked a table at a 2* Michelin restaurant (the closest 3* was fully booked), enjoyed a wonderful dinner and a 40 euro Cohiba to end the evening with. My boss fainted when she saw the 400 euro bill for my company credit card, but I just shrugged my shoulders and said that I honestly thought I was worth it. Now my boss has gotten wiser and literary puts a price tag on my exhausted and burn out face. And when I complain being too stressed she doesn’t either say anymore “Well dear, take some time off”, but “Take two days off, remember two !”.

So I didn’t ask Mr. T. how I should proceed if I wanted to become something. I was maybe afraid if I asked, he would tell me not to waste my youth on travels and partying. He would instead suggest that I rent myself a room in an addict without toilet and running water, be depressed and start writing. But an 18-year girl doesn’t want that kind of advice. So I didn’t ask, in stead I accepted the fact that he is God and it was his will me to become something. And I haven’t lifted a finger; I wouldn’t dare to interfere God’s plans.