Born unfettered and free, to a life that seemed infinite in its possibilities and brimming with the promise of miracles, we have shrunk to an age of exhausted loneliness. We are trapped in an age where our comfort zones have created a claustrophobic existence- one that we will never come to shake off. Waking up disgruntled and tired to our bright phone screens and working wonky hours in the week to blow off some steam during the measly weekend for a mandatory pic-flood on social media is what our lives have been reduced to. We live in an endless pattern of rotten routine, doing nothing to change the pizza deliveries at our doorsteps, the online shopping binges or even, our maniacal swipe-fests of love quests!
Image source: Pixabay, under Creative Commons License
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In an age where we are always one lover away from finding true love or just one manual orgasm away to being with someone who can really put the ‘oh-s’ in our O’s, we stand together for duckfaced selfies and yet, remain isolated and alone in crowds. We know little about each other and hold Ph.Ds in trending Twitter handles. We have seemed to arrive, in the conventional sense of the term, in that the swanky car, the plush home and the uber-cool Instagram feed are all ticked off the checklist- and yet, something about our seemingly perfect lives seems to be grossly amiss.
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Whether we are pumping iron at the gym or belting out numbers in a board meeting, we are hustling towards some hollow goal, some vague ideal that we do not quite understand. Our life of highlighting our achievements on online career profiles and streaming countless photos (all the same but with different filters) on social media are reducing our lives to a scrapbook life that shall soon catch dust in the corner. Whether it is the idea of scaling hithertofore uncharted heights in your profession or attaining a swoon-worthy look, we are becoming more and more conformist to society’s notions of success and image while continuing to profess otherwise through seemingly rebellious online rants- the progeny of our keyboard activism.
There is no time to breathe. Achievement is a necessity and having a ‘cool’ life an obligation. A pile of awards and an avalanche of your photos downing drinks and dancing away your blues duly documented so people can validate your ‘all is well’ life with clicks is fast turning us into brooding Hamlets of a far more grave, but invisible tragedy. We are running behind a feeling that can assure us that this madness is not for naught- but we know it ain’t coming. We run after it with the confidence of a man who’s had to repeat the f*cking assurance to himself a hundred times in front of the mirror- and yet, knows in his heart how futile the hope is. The race is that of Narcissus, ridden with self-doubt.
The more you pace up, the faster the race becomes. The faster you get, the farther behind you feel. There is no winning this mad competition. It is turning us into hollow robots, going after impossible ideals of ‘achievement plus fun’ that seem all the more hollow, once they elusively land in our grip. It is a losing game, really.
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We weren’t born to feel this overbearing sense of defeat, this maddening rush of emptiness. An emptiness that reeks of the emptiness of everything we get or everything we are ever going to get.
Let’s pause. STOP.
Let’s turn back. REWIND.
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Weren’t we the miracle children? The children who’d find joy in the sunlight streaming from the round of an aqua green marble? The children who’d find comfort in mom’s hot steaming cup of tea on bluesy rainy afternoons? The children who knew that beneath the veneer of all our finite achievements and even more finite fun, we are infinite?
Image source: Pixabay, under Creative Commons License
Then, let’s quit the race. Let’s breathe. In this moment, NOW, let’s give ourselves a breather- a reminder- one that says that where we are at, in our lives, is a blessed condition. We have a loving family, a great set of friends, jobs (easy or difficult, whatever) and so much more. We are effing on top of the world and that’s cause for celebration. And yet, here we are, anxious, worried, bathed in loneliness or simply bored, tapping and swiping away on our phone screens for something. Anything.
Can we log out of this crazy age of aloofness and sign in into the possibilities of infinite REAL connections in life? With life?
Featured image source: Pixabay, under Creative Commons License
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