Having Awareness But Wishing For Ignorance.
Being stuck in the vicious cycle of life is a treat that each and every one of us gets a hearty share of. Being placed within the frames created by society, our culture, our family, or ourselves seems to be the core feature of what many call “the human condition”. Many of us are condemned to familiar routines and roads which lead to a predictable future, one which perfectly fits into the puzzle of “broader life”, if you will.
It is as if our very birth is a prison sentence which we must serve, the length of which unknown to us, the harshness of which remains unknown but yet we are given some general guidelines which we use to avoid what we assume to be the worst. It is in fact these very guidelines which land us in the cyclical torment which as children we loathed and did our best to avoid. Yet here we are as adults, still with bedtimes, still with rules, still boxed into certain constraints, certain areas. Nothing changed in fact. We are still expected to behave and remain within certain borders, everybody wants to be “the responsible adult”, for that is what leads to success, we are told. I am one of these “responsible” ones, unfortunately.
Yet what is the most disenchanting and painful is not the cycle itself, but rather the awareness of it. Ignorance is bliss, yes, and even more so here. I would love to be a mindless cog in the system, a gear which just turns and knows nothing else. Just turns. Aimlessly, focused on a single task which it oh so masterfully performs, and oh so efficiently contributes to the machine. But the awareness of this plight is what keeps me up for far too many nights. I am following all the rules, I am pursuing what I believe will make me the happiest in the most material and ego-boosting ways, and yet at the same time I am fully aware that it is all but a façade of my true desires.
But what are my true desires? My real goals? My source of happiness?
Who knows? One may say that I am the only one who knows the answer to this existential question but even myself, I am completely clueless. Truth is, I never had the chance to really explore the various avenues of life, to throw myself in the water and see which shore I wash up on, to close my eyes and just walk relying on my instincts. I always had a plan. A plan that was the perfection of a “responsible adult” in my mind, and a plan that I am still very much committed to, because frankly, its too fucking late to turn around.
The awareness of your life being wasted for nothing, the recognition of the fact that you are no longer living every moment of your existence, or even feeling alive. You’re just there, just like everybody else. You’re a faceless stranger just as much to yourself when looking in the mirror, as to someone who walks by you on a busy street. A face, but nothing more than that, nothing deeper. A replaceable, useful gear within the machine — but again, a happy gear doesn’t think about being anything more. It simply, doesn’t think. Lucky dog.
Sure I seek to escape this tortuous and brutal pattern which most succumb to. I stay up late at night, at times I’ll write, perhaps draw, or just get drunk on my own. Essentially, I make it a point to engage in something utterly useless — something that does nothing for my law career, something that does nothing for those around me, something that does not progress me in life per say. Its in those late hours of the night, in solitude, that you not only become hyper-aware of your wasted time, your wasted emotions, thoughts and words, but you also become brave enough to feel alive, as a distinct unit, one that is ignorant about the futility of your existence. On your own.
You call out for someone within yourself, and you realize that no one calls back, radio silence. You call and call again, more desperate each time. Finally, you feel something, something echoes back and for a few hours you feel unique again, like you’re more important than anything else in the world.
In fact, I am experiencing this as I write this right now. I feel the need to write this to remind myself that I fully aware of the dangers with which my “responsible adult” highway comes with. I know I can lose myself, and I have lost many parts and sides of myself, parts which I will never see again. Those parts of me are dead, and now its matter of not letting the rest of me die, to not let me become absorbed into something which I find so demeaning, so empty. Therefore, I constantly try to look within and remind myself to do things which don’t matter in the grander scheme of things but at the very least, they serve as this rebellious act which puts up some form of resistance, however low the odds may be.
Nevertheless, the longer you don’t call that inner you, the harder it is to hear back from it, the less it is willing to live, and the more eager it becomes to die. For dying is easy, its the most freeing experience, it lets you escape everything once and for all, and there is no more awareness, no more need to question the worth of life, or its “point” — its gone anyway.
Call for it.
