The Beginning of the EndStatus: Lunatic Calm
As people – the parasitic disease we are – we numb ourselves to the things that matter because the things that matter are the most terrifying and leave us vulnerable. We’re told to forget about the emotions and motives and needs of others and focus on ourselves, falsely glorifying selfishness as self preservation and then wondering why it’s such a shitter of a dog-eat-dog world. We’re taught that other people are just experiences or lessons to be learnt or a means to an end, a stepping stone to some place better, when the truth is that other people are just as human and as fragile as you are. When it comes to everyone else, we’re told to move on, we’re told to forget, we’re told not to try and then we complain because people aren’t any good. Human selfishness fuels our behaviour and lets us believe we have control over our existences, that it’s somehow justifiable to believe everyone and everything else is inferior in regards to our own self gain, all the while providing a pleasant distraction from the obvious.
Everything's eventual.
We like to ignore our mortality and insignificance. We pursue fleeting happiness and prestigious career paths to fill the void between now and when we inevitably cease to be. We try to achieve some sense of significance and meaning - in family, in religion, in jobs and hobbies - to make our lives somehow worthwhile. We don’t like the idea of there being no innate justice, that sometimes shit just happens no matter what you do, that there is no real control and that we are slave to social norms until we die.
Maybe humankind is flawed for a reason. Recently, I have come to believe that the reason why the goals we strive for our whole lives are usually out of reach is because if we were to truly discover our purpose or meaning for existing in all of its complexity and wholeness, it would drive a person mad. Perhaps it is a fail safe to prevent us from discovering that the thing we have pursued with all of our hearts isn’t anywhere hear as pure or as perfect or as noble or completing as we aspire it to be. Some were just made to fail. Maybe once the effort and the hope and the persistence and the heart have been poured into one goal, there is nothing left. Maybe our motivation for existing, for striving, for loving, for risking, for hoping and for being is all an illusion.
Every person wants to believe that they matter, that they have a purpose – except for those starving people from third world countries featured on World Vision ads, that ex-girlfriend you don’t talk to anymore or that mentally-disabled guy who waves to everyone at the supermarket on Wednesdays; those people aren’t real. We like to believe that there is some divine reason, the meaning of life. We all like to think we’re each put on this earth to achieve something, something that will matter.
But what if some people just don’t matter? What if some people are just not made to matter? What if this is just some sick saga, where some people really are propelled into the spotlight, destined for glory and good fortune, despite what they do or how they treat others? What if this is some twisted fate where some people are just subplots for others to feed off of, stepping stones to be tossed aside for another’s wellbeing? What if that is the meaning, the thing some of us are destined to achieve?
Sometimes what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. And sometimes, there is no lesson; sometimes you’re just torn to pieces. Some people never learn from being told or from innate kindness, some need the fear of God and love and loss and human fragility to finally understand.
It takes the next door neighbour's suicide for you to actually realise that your best friend means something special to you. Your sister's colleague was raped while walking home from work and suddenly your devotion and love towards your partner of 5 years renews. Sometimes innocent lives need to be torn apart and insignificant people need to die so that others looking on can learn some sort of cruel life lesson or realisation of "Thank God that didn’t happen to anyone I actually care about," or "Next time, I should be more careful". Sometimes they never learn. Sometimes there is no reason for casualties at all.
Maybe it takes someone else to take the blow. Maybe some people are just placed into existence to fail, to be nothing more than a lesson or experience for the sake of others. Maybe those people are just casualties to a greater scheme of things. Maybe some people are destined to mean something solely in death and absolutely nothing in life. Maybe their place in all this is to diffuse the blow when the sledgehammer falls. In other words, if a God exists, chances are It’s a brutal and sadistic Utilitarian.
But what happens once you reach the end? What happens once you've realised everything you've wanted and strived for? Furthermore, what if after all that effort and pain and heart, you are to discover it’s a prize out of reach? What if, after pledging heart and soul, you realise the one thing you wanted is the one thing you can never have? What happens when you realise that you are just one of the empty subplots, merely here to toe the line and flesh out a life lesson or two for someone else? What happens when you discover you are just a casualty to a bigger picture? What happens when you learn that you don’t actually matter?
There is a deep sense of emptiness to realise that not a single heart will cease to beat for a moment when mine does. There is an unbearable sadness upon the realisation that the love and belonging I have always wanted, the one thing I have dedicated my life towards, was never to be. It saddens me that people take having someone to love them and support them as a standard feature or a human right. It hurts because so many people fail to fully appreciate things like love and human kindness, because love is all I’ve ever wanted. I have given up absolutely everything for love and still never got a thing in return, and yet people who didn’t want it as much or work as hard towards it will have someone to love them and so much more. Their ambitions involve wealth and fame and prestigious career paths that they forget having someone around is one of the greatest things of all, whereas I would give up all that without hesitation to have just one heartbeat in time where someone genuinely cared for me. It makes me sad because that’s all I’ve ever wanted and it’s something I will never have. It saddens me to realise that people who fail to appreciate the significance of belonging, of being loved, of having a family, or having somewhere safe, will have the love and acceptance I have always craved and take it as a standard feature rather than the greatest gift ever known.
I have come to realise that maybe it is the shadow I leave behind, rather than my very self, that is of significance. I was never made to have the one thing I wanted, to be happy. As hollow as it is, the nature of my purpose is clear. There’s a finality, a definiteness, an unwavering certainty, a clarity that is so absolute, it almost makes me smile.
There’s a strange lunatic calm to realising your own insignificance, a fearlessness that arises once you spend your life fighting for one thing, working towards one dream, only to realise what you live and breathe for is just a happiness that was never made for you to have. Nothing else seems to matter, becoming mere distractions and inconveniences to fill the gap between now and the point at which you stop breathing. There’s a fearlessness in having absolutely nothing left. There’s no fear of failure or death or having your heart broken into pieces on a daily basis. There is no concern for dignity anymore. There is no concern for pride.
I may not have been made to be loved, I may not have been made to be protected, I may not have been made to matter, but maybe I am so that others will be loved and protected and be held in some regard. Maybe I am just a subplot to remind lovers to always treasure and appreciate the trivial nothings of love before it is to late, a lesson in human durability and vulnerability to challenge the selfish social norms of hollow smiles and empty promises, an experience to highlight the decomposition of a broken heart and a fable to inspire the question in neglectful parents: "Do you know where your children are?".
I may not be happy, I may not have been granted the one thing I have tried to strive towards, but at least I have found the one thing I have lived and died for, even if it is now obvious it was never meant for me. It may have been a losing battle, and it may have been a simplistic, childhood dream, but at least I found it – even if it was a hollow promise – and that sense of realization and completion in itself is something that very few ever achieve in their lifetime. I have found my reason for being and now I have come to realise why humans were never made to find the purpose for being or their true heart’s desire.
Perhaps I was born to be under a sledgehammer to diffuse the blow. I know what I am here to do now; there is only time.
There are always casualties.
As people – the parasitic disease we are – we numb ourselves to the things that matter because the things that matter are the most terrifying and leave us vulnerable. We’re told to forget about the emotions and motives and needs of others and focus on ourselves, falsely glorifying selfishness as self preservation and then wondering why it’s such a shitter of a dog-eat-dog world. We’re taught that other people are just experiences or lessons to be learnt or a means to an end, a stepping stone to some place better, when the truth is that other people are just as human and as fragile as you are. When it comes to everyone else, we’re told to move on, we’re told to forget, we’re told not to try and then we complain because people aren’t any good. Human selfishness fuels our behaviour and lets us believe we have control over our existences, that it’s somehow justifiable to believe everyone and everything else is inferior in regards to our own self gain, all the while providing a pleasant distraction from the obvious.
Everything's eventual.
We like to ignore our mortality and insignificance. We pursue fleeting happiness and prestigious career paths to fill the void between now and when we inevitably cease to be. We try to achieve some sense of significance and meaning - in family, in religion, in jobs and hobbies - to make our lives somehow worthwhile. We don’t like the idea of there being no innate justice, that sometimes shit just happens no matter what you do, that there is no real control and that we are slave to social norms until we die.
Maybe humankind is flawed for a reason. Recently, I have come to believe that the reason why the goals we strive for our whole lives are usually out of reach is because if we were to truly discover our purpose or meaning for existing in all of its complexity and wholeness, it would drive a person mad. Perhaps it is a fail safe to prevent us from discovering that the thing we have pursued with all of our hearts isn’t anywhere hear as pure or as perfect or as noble or completing as we aspire it to be. Some were just made to fail. Maybe once the effort and the hope and the persistence and the heart have been poured into one goal, there is nothing left. Maybe our motivation for existing, for striving, for loving, for risking, for hoping and for being is all an illusion.
Every person wants to believe that they matter, that they have a purpose – except for those starving people from third world countries featured on World Vision ads, that ex-girlfriend you don’t talk to anymore or that mentally-disabled guy who waves to everyone at the supermarket on Wednesdays; those people aren’t real. We like to believe that there is some divine reason, the meaning of life. We all like to think we’re each put on this earth to achieve something, something that will matter.
But what if some people just don’t matter? What if some people are just not made to matter? What if this is just some sick saga, where some people really are propelled into the spotlight, destined for glory and good fortune, despite what they do or how they treat others? What if this is some twisted fate where some people are just subplots for others to feed off of, stepping stones to be tossed aside for another’s wellbeing? What if that is the meaning, the thing some of us are destined to achieve?
Sometimes what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. And sometimes, there is no lesson; sometimes you’re just torn to pieces. Some people never learn from being told or from innate kindness, some need the fear of God and love and loss and human fragility to finally understand.
It takes the next door neighbour's suicide for you to actually realise that your best friend means something special to you. Your sister's colleague was raped while walking home from work and suddenly your devotion and love towards your partner of 5 years renews. Sometimes innocent lives need to be torn apart and insignificant people need to die so that others looking on can learn some sort of cruel life lesson or realisation of "Thank God that didn’t happen to anyone I actually care about," or "Next time, I should be more careful". Sometimes they never learn. Sometimes there is no reason for casualties at all.
Maybe it takes someone else to take the blow. Maybe some people are just placed into existence to fail, to be nothing more than a lesson or experience for the sake of others. Maybe those people are just casualties to a greater scheme of things. Maybe some people are destined to mean something solely in death and absolutely nothing in life. Maybe their place in all this is to diffuse the blow when the sledgehammer falls. In other words, if a God exists, chances are It’s a brutal and sadistic Utilitarian.
But what happens once you reach the end? What happens once you've realised everything you've wanted and strived for? Furthermore, what if after all that effort and pain and heart, you are to discover it’s a prize out of reach? What if, after pledging heart and soul, you realise the one thing you wanted is the one thing you can never have? What happens when you realise that you are just one of the empty subplots, merely here to toe the line and flesh out a life lesson or two for someone else? What happens when you discover you are just a casualty to a bigger picture? What happens when you learn that you don’t actually matter?
There is a deep sense of emptiness to realise that not a single heart will cease to beat for a moment when mine does. There is an unbearable sadness upon the realisation that the love and belonging I have always wanted, the one thing I have dedicated my life towards, was never to be. It saddens me that people take having someone to love them and support them as a standard feature or a human right. It hurts because so many people fail to fully appreciate things like love and human kindness, because love is all I’ve ever wanted. I have given up absolutely everything for love and still never got a thing in return, and yet people who didn’t want it as much or work as hard towards it will have someone to love them and so much more. Their ambitions involve wealth and fame and prestigious career paths that they forget having someone around is one of the greatest things of all, whereas I would give up all that without hesitation to have just one heartbeat in time where someone genuinely cared for me. It makes me sad because that’s all I’ve ever wanted and it’s something I will never have. It saddens me to realise that people who fail to appreciate the significance of belonging, of being loved, of having a family, or having somewhere safe, will have the love and acceptance I have always craved and take it as a standard feature rather than the greatest gift ever known.
I have come to realise that maybe it is the shadow I leave behind, rather than my very self, that is of significance. I was never made to have the one thing I wanted, to be happy. As hollow as it is, the nature of my purpose is clear. There’s a finality, a definiteness, an unwavering certainty, a clarity that is so absolute, it almost makes me smile.
There’s a strange lunatic calm to realising your own insignificance, a fearlessness that arises once you spend your life fighting for one thing, working towards one dream, only to realise what you live and breathe for is just a happiness that was never made for you to have. Nothing else seems to matter, becoming mere distractions and inconveniences to fill the gap between now and the point at which you stop breathing. There’s a fearlessness in having absolutely nothing left. There’s no fear of failure or death or having your heart broken into pieces on a daily basis. There is no concern for dignity anymore. There is no concern for pride.
I may not have been made to be loved, I may not have been made to be protected, I may not have been made to matter, but maybe I am so that others will be loved and protected and be held in some regard. Maybe I am just a subplot to remind lovers to always treasure and appreciate the trivial nothings of love before it is to late, a lesson in human durability and vulnerability to challenge the selfish social norms of hollow smiles and empty promises, an experience to highlight the decomposition of a broken heart and a fable to inspire the question in neglectful parents: "Do you know where your children are?".
I may not be happy, I may not have been granted the one thing I have tried to strive towards, but at least I have found the one thing I have lived and died for, even if it is now obvious it was never meant for me. It may have been a losing battle, and it may have been a simplistic, childhood dream, but at least I found it – even if it was a hollow promise – and that sense of realization and completion in itself is something that very few ever achieve in their lifetime. I have found my reason for being and now I have come to realise why humans were never made to find the purpose for being or their true heart’s desire.
Perhaps I was born to be under a sledgehammer to diffuse the blow. I know what I am here to do now; there is only time.
There are always casualties.
