Inertia is something that has always fascinated me. It affects almost every part of my life. The amount of time I spend under the state of inertia is definitely harmful for my existence.
Today, I ended my 18 day streak of 10,000 steps walked. Wasted my day away and lied to myself by saying, “It’s the end of the month. You’re broke. Just sleep in.” Some parts of this lie are true, but that’s what makes a lie seems truthful right? That’s why you can let it past your firewall of internal thoughts.
The past few weeks of my life have been really proactive. I finished a 3 minute video in under a month. That’s the quickest I’ve ever gotten through one. I also started writing a screenplay. Two screenplays, actually, but the other is collaborative. I’ve met new, interesting, like-minded people. For someone who considers themselves antisocial, this doesn’t really happen often. And I enjoyed it too.
However, as soon as you think you’ve risen above your worst vices, they come right back, kick you in the ass and let you know your place in the world. You’re still an addict, doesn’t matter what you’re addicted to.
Everyone’s an addict.
In reality, I don’t understand what I’m really doing in life. “I just am.”, said drunk me to a random woman I met at a film screening. And now that I’ve sobered up, I still don’t understand what I really meant.
Being terminally online causes some irreparable damage to your daily perspective on life. Everyday I open my phone up to the same incoherent hate-fueled narratives, be it on someone’s culture or a random footballer who failed to live up to expectations in England. So much of your worldview begins to take affect as a result of what other people think of other people. The people you’ll never encounter in your life tangibly begin to kill every amount of self esteem and originality you may happen to possess. It’s a dangerous pipeline to go down.
And if your esteem doesn’t take a hit, the mere realization of your social privilege is seemingly enough to depress you for 5 consecutive lifetimes. Nowadays, you don’t even have to go outside to acknowledge your standing in society. Your train of thought is enough to distinguish you from the other.
You realize that wanting the good for everyone in itself is a privilege. And it’s a harrowing realization cuz well, some people(most people in my country) don’t even have the time to think for themselves.
The grip of hedonism on our society is ever-growing and I’ve almost come to terms with the fact that, in the grand scheme of things, we’re royally screwed. I don’t understand if this is because of my prefrontal cortex developing and gaining more awareness about the world I inhabit.
Every few months, the internet finds another ethnicity to fuel hate towards. It was the Indians a few months ago, now it’s the Jews. They claim they’re getting more ‘aware’ but really it’s just pandering to trends. The Israeli genocide of Palestinians is one of the worst things that we as a society have let pass, and instead of taking on the “better late than never” mindset and looking for ways to find amends, all you find are memes and ragebait.
The amount of significance a single human life holds is almost incomprehensible until you watch someone close to you, cease to exist. The human life should never be minimized to a number. It doesn’t do life justice.
Unfortunately, in the world we live in, lives are almost always looked at as a statistic to be calculated. This reminds me of something Billy Woods says in his song ‘Soft Landing’,
"A single death is a tragedy but eggs make omelets,
Statistics how he look at war casualties,
Killin' is one thing, what sticks is how casually"
Even talking about how significant a single life seems like participating in living hypocrisy that our world has turned into. I can’t go around criticizing the system when I actively am part of the same system. Every time some money goes out of my account to Spotify, I indirectly fund warmongering and the surveillance economy.
The way the system is set up, it’s rigged from the beginning. There’s that glimmer of hope that, as a civilisation we’ll regrow our conscience and work towards the betterment of each other. But even that glimmer is now starting to feel like another oncoming train, ready to flatten anything in its path.
I don’t know why I chose to write today, but if you read this far, I hope you enjoyed the incoherent rants from a 19 year old.