love, read, write

00. preface

Babies are born crying. I don’t know much about biology or baby science or whatever it is, but it’s strange to me that from the moment we are birthed into this world, we begin with tears. It’s kind of funny, actually--the whole process of birth seems like an excruciating pain from beginning to end. There we are, watching footage of what people call “the miracle of creating another human” but it’s all bullshit because there’s nothing more uncomfortable than watching a shaky, timestamped-in-the-bottom-left-corner, low resolution video of your mother screaming from the most intense physical pain she will ever feel in her entire life while you emerge, bloody and bawling like there’s no tomorrow. Fleeting to and fro from any clear line of vision are a bunch of masked humans, trying to deal with the situation as calmly as possible so that no one dies. The beauty of birth.

Since my chaotic beginnings, I’ve contemplated the idea of existence quite a bit. To date I have reached no conclusions. The purpose that someone claims to find in their life seems only to be a sort of self-conceived phenomenon. There is, as far as my records show, no definitive answer to why anyone is alive or, for that matter, what we’re supposed to do during our unfortunate time here.

But when you’re young, things are new and exciting. There is this inherent element of amazement stitched to our core and whenever we see something new and inviting, that little ball of amazement bursts in our chests. As a child, you keep discovering these new, cool things in the materialistic world we’ve created for ourselves. For several years, the goods of life far outweigh the bad. Little hiccups in childhood friendships may cause remorse, but all tears can be quickly remedied with enough Lego Star Wars sets.

(You really can buy happiness for kids. I don’t care what the pseudo-optimists say.)

Things get old fast, though. If the first few years of life are devoted to discovering and appreciating the good sides of the materialistic world, the rest is filled with discovering throat-constricting expectations and constraints of society while also feeling remorse for not being able to satisfy our materialistic desires under this hyper-capitalist society designed for the already successful.

Emotional development is irrelevant. It occurs organically regardless of the societal structure. Interaction between people will probably never change--love, greed, anger, fear, sorrow, happiness. What matters is the frequency of each emotion and which emotion drives oneself to the framework of success designed by the type of civilization that one lives in.

But I diverge. My point? Life is cold and ruthless. The older you get, the more daunting and unavoidable that reality becomes.

In fact, I can simultaneously understand but also not understand why people believe in any kind of deity. It’s nice to lay the responsibility of life events on some sort of invisible but benevolent and sentient figure. That way, we can convince ourselves that the ruthless chance-happenings of life are somehow meant for the best. It’s actually incredibly smart that people have thought up this idea of religion. The basic framework for it is ingenious--no wonder it has such a large following. You lay off the blame and convince yourself everything’s going to be okay. Who’s not to sign up for that?

People like me, I guess. People who can’t do enough mind tricks to make themselves believe in something they cannot see; people who are too skeptical to put trust in an invisible figure; people who cannot make themselves join what has essentially become a cult following; people who are just too damn tired and sick of life to acknowledge any kind of greater purpose.

I used to think life was only cruel to me. That all of the bad things that happened to me were the acts of some sort of anti-God who wanted me to suffer as much as possible while I was alive. My thoughts weighed like heavy boulders digging into my back. On multiple occasions I met with unfortunate events that left me wondering why anything was worth doing. I felt isolated, like a little girl living alone on a deserted island, texting people through a flip-phone but knowing that I could never actually meet them because I was in an inherently different dimension.

I didn’t realize how universal this emotion was. Is life cruel or fair in giving everyone such crippling burdens?