Possessed. To Have or To Be?

There is a moment I did not want to name for a long time. Not because it was painful, but because it looked so unspectacular from the outside. A Tuesday afternoon. I was sitting in front of a blank white screen that looked bleak — the page was white and stayed white. I was sitting in front of the headline of an article I was supposed to write, and instead I was writing notes about an idea that had been following me for weeks. Not occupying me. Following me. That is the right word. Until that particular day, I had the idea. After that, it had me.

I would not have put it that way back then. I would have said: I am very engaged. I am motivated. I am investing a great deal. All sentences in which an I appears that stays in control, that decides, that chooses. But what I was actually doing was: giving in. Giving in more and more completely. The possessing I still thought it was directing things. The possessed I had already turned the key.

The turn from possessing-obsession to being-possessed was only a brief flicker. But the consequences were considerable.

Back in Basel I had possessed quite a few things. All those material, comfortable, status-laden things that make a life look successful. Which feels exactly like that. The flip side of that luxury coin is the pressure, the stress, the marathon of staying successful. Whatever happened to the relaxed fellow in hippie mode?

Lisa saw it. My sister saw it. Even my landlord asked at some point whether everything was alright with me, because I said the same thing three times while collecting the mail. What these people noticed was not a symptom. It was evidence of a shift in the balance of power between me and an idea. And I filed their words away at the time, bent them, shelved them as exaggeration. Now I hear them again — word for word, without commentary — and realise: they were right. I had taken a wrong turn. I was possessed.

The conflict is not dramatic. It is quieter than expected. The possessing I wants to choose when and how much. It wants to stop in the evenings, it wants to take pleasure in other things, it wants to be present at dinner. The possessed I, on the other hand, has no closing time. It finds its way in through detours — through a conversation about the weather, through a song, through a window tipped open on an afternoon. It no longer needs an invitation. It already lives here.

What I am looking for is not a return to before. That would be nostalgia, not a goal. What I am looking for is the moment just before that afternoon — that last instant in which both still existed side by side, the choice and the pull, the I and the object of my obsession, still separated by a thin, permeable membrane. Because in that in-between space — perhaps — lies the story I actually want to tell. Not the after. The exactly-then.

Lisa was right. I had known it for a long time.

Here and now I am again travelling with an idea, a vision that keeps me from sleeping. That keeps every synapse at a steady sprint. Am I possessed again?

Yes and no.

The passion for an idea, a project is the engine, the drive, and it shows few signs of obsession. Yes, I am wild about seeing this project through, for better or for obsession.

Why?

Because I can? Because I must? Because I want?

No — because the joy in this project gallops ahead so gloriously.

I am possessed.