A boy is wooing a girl his heart burns for. They go on a trip. He is very courteous. She acts modestly. They spend days learning one another intensely. The sexual tension is shooting through the roof, yet they wait. One night, she lies on a bed daydreaming while he sits in a chair, sensing something. He says: "You're in a field, the sun is low, sunlight caressing the flowers and your skin. Zemfira is singing in the background, that song about break up." She jumps up, astonished. "How did you know?" "I saw it the same way you did," he responds calmly. That is the final straw. Their love begins in that moment. It ends a few years later, but the link lasts much longer. Even two decades later, he still senses her sometimes. She is never surprised when he calls.
A young man tries to drown his sorrow. His world's violence, injustice and imperfection are too much for him. He drinks every day and does Charlie to drink more. Every week he does Mandy to feel something besides his eternal grief and Lucy to maintain some form of sanity. He has not felt any natural joy in years. Every time he wakes up soaking wet from his withdrawal nightmare, a letter awaits in his inbox. A girl from the other side of the world opens every letter to him with "Dear Enemy." She then explains the emotions he is going through in words he couldn't find himself. He reads them in disbelief. Memories of his first big love come back. His psychedelic trips when he was aware of what was to be said before it was pronounced. After years of this communication, he invites the girl over. She flies across the world and is horrified to find an addict deep in the pit of consumption. She is terrified of addicts. A month together feels like a lifetime of horror. She runs away to the edge of the world and writes a very graphic book about her enemy. Their link still lingers. A young man now knows he is not the only one with the skill.
A recovering man decides to train as an actor to learn more about himself and how to express emotions. As his training gets deeper, he struggles to feel the deep desire. He thinks he is over this life and had so much to experience that nothing can make him want it for real. One day, his master shows him that the desire burns white hot within, but it's cloaked by fear. A man dares to look inside his fear and instantly gets lost. In front of an audience of his fellow actors, he is facing a monster that he dared not disturb, and he is losing his shit. His master calmly and steadily guides him through the maze of his mind as if he sees everything man sees, even the visions he refuses to see. Upon recovery, a man realises the skill can be tamed; he has experienced what good it could do when under the complete control of a master.
A grown man awakens in a surprisingly cheerful mood. It's been a while since he felt this way. Life had not been easy lately, and most sources of joy were long gone, including his libido. Suddenly, he finds himself not only happy but also aroused and wanting. In disbelief, he tries to remember his dreams, yet no answers come from them. A few moments later, his phone vibrates, a credit card charge from across the world. A woman he once loved sends a selfie in her new dress - his birthday present to her. Ah, the excitement antenna knows no distance. He sensed her emotion grow as she selected the gift from him, and his body responded. It has been six months since they broke up, but he knows that this connection will last much longer, annoying as it is.
These connections open up every time we are brutally honest with one another. Some stay open long enough to leave an embassy within your partner. That embassy stays open no matter what, whether you like it or not. As one gets more open to the world, his emotions intertwine with whole groups of people. One starts to feel the lingering communal pain all the time. There is no escape from it. Counterintuitively, the way towards inner peace is through relinquishing control. Only when one is brave enough to take all the pain, sorrow, joy of one's past loves, and sadness of the world can a path to serenity open up.
I hope it does.