Suggested listen: Cage The Elephant - Telescope
I’m not sure if this is a common experience that captivates every one of us as we get older. In my previous posts I’ve talked about your understanding of reality collapsing as you step into puberty and suggested most people refuse to go through a similar experience when it’s needed again. I was kinda forced to practice that almost periodically throughout my life. Many traumatic experiences, social exclusion, extreme loneliness, having to start over many times in different cities, different countries. I’m not sure if I would do that willingly if I wasn’t really forced to do so, most probably not. You don’t wake up as a completely new person one morning just because. It’s not all too bad though. Looking back, each time I had to transition, I grew a bit. I was more content with myself as I had to obtain a different role in life even though transitions themselves were very painful and required a lot of healing.
But what I want to talk about today is not quite the same. It’s one thing to develop a completely new perspective on things and another to lose all grip on life. Imagine waking up to a Dr. Who episode, except it’s much, much more boring and also it’s literally everyday. Not in a funny way, not in a mysterious way. Things are just not relatable, not interesting. Does that sound familiar? Ever since the pandemic, most people I talked to, thought so. Around that time something seemed to have changed profoundly. Not overnight, but somehow overtime we found ourselves in this zeitgeist.
Nightmares are harmless as long as you wake up from them. If you were to wake up to another one, that would be extremely haunting, wouldn’t it? Love it or hate it, life is just that. Casualty casts a time prison onto your consciousness. You ought to be meanwhile. I’m not gonna argue that I know for a fact what consciousness is. That’s one of the greatest mysteries to this life. We all experience a set of relations that cannot catch on itself. But regardless, we know that we’re taken hostage to embody ourselves. There’s no waking up to the end of time, at least not that we are aware of.
Usually speaking, it wouldn’t be a bother anyway. That’s if we were to be content with the conditions. Doesn’t matter if you see yourself like a cheetah chasing its prey, or a cow enjoying a grass field, or a dancer captivated by the rhythm of existence. There’s fruit to eat, sky to gaze, fresh air to breathe, rivers to drench, mountains to climb, music to beat out, books to read, friends to cheer, lovers to hold. You don’t necessarily have to emerge from nothing. I mean you can if you want to. Study the essence of this universe or the mind. But life itself is already rather marvelous.
But civilizations tend to lose their mojo and create miserable generations. Generations that cannot find any joy in living. And it keeps happening. This is the fourth time in the last century, a depression era occurred. Acting like nothing is happening, avoiding the discussion, nihilistically giving up on doing better or encouraging people to do better, trying to beat the arms race, and bunch of other useless coping mechanisms are not achieving anything. Many suggested that building big machines as societies and trapping people in its gears, predictably creates hopeless souls. Many suggested only previous ones were to blame and this one is just right.
Either way, there’s a pretty obvious repeating pattern here though. Losing trust. An uncertainty occurs, folks start to feel insecure, that triggers a “every man for himself” mania, things get circularly worse. Living together requires trust in each other. The moment it vanishes, the rug gets pulled underneath. I recall a tweet from some time ago that said; “if both basketball teams just worked together, they could score so many more points”. Sounds funny alright, but shouldn't that be how we operate on a daily basis anyway? I’m aware that it’s really difficult for different cultures to coexist, it’s impossible to make everyone happy without sacrificing something. But can we really make this civilization thing work without everyone wanting the best for everyone else?
We’re in this clink together. Time prison stops for no one. No one can escape (depending on your spiritual beliefs), no one can truly win. We can be great all together or we can be miserable individually. We keep cycling in between though. Cycles are getting quite frequent too. Feast on all you can get, get your dream career, make tons of money, go through a series of partners, grab all the attention you can get, do the vices in bottles or in rolls or whatever your poison is, none of those will truly bring happiness. When will we accept chasing carrots is actually cringe?
I would say I don’t care anymore but it’s just not true. You cannot truly stop caring. We’re all the “Man Who Thought He'd Lost All Hope Loses Last Additional Bit Of Hope He Didn't Even Know He Still Had” guy. Every time you say you don’t care, just set another alarm for realizing you still do. Love is like gravity. It’s endless, it’s inherent, it ties us together. It’s not stupid to love. It’s not lame to love. It’s not inconsiderate to love. Contrary to belief, it’s effortless. We don’t get hurt because we love, or we trust. We hurt because we’re afraid. Ego is afraid. I suggest being courageous enough to be afraid and not to act on our weaknesses is possible. We can be afraid together. None is alone in time prison.