Analogikal

We run along to please people that an algorithm told us are important, all the while forgetting the opportunities to do good for the people around us, people who might not be used to nice things being done for them.

We aspire to a life filled with possessions, curated experiences, and connections with everyone we come across. The human experience is one of Styrofoam cups, take-away meal boxes, and clicking on skip intro. We all have promises to keep but not enough energy to meet them. Bodies tired and minds aching, we prod along in life. We do not seek death, but we aren’t running away if it finds us; at least I’m not. There’s only one final answer in the constant quest for what’s next. We have optimised our lives for death.

Countless concerts, smiles, and sunsets have been missed while clicking pictures of them. We live in nostalgia, regret, and hope, never truly becoming one with the moment. Checklists, bucket lists, and listicles that never end. Passports that cannot be filled up fast enough. An infinite feed of recommendations telling us what to do, whom to follow, and where to go next. Chats are left unread because words have lost their value and meaning. We are marinating in echo chambers and negative automatic thought spirals.

Living in the moment is painful. All the hypocrisy, lies, and deceit of people whom we trusted to do right by humanity. We trusted the wrong people. We make quiet, cosy corners where we feel safe for a brief moment, a moment before the claws of marketing, xenophobia, or hatred come for us, for our attention, money, or worse still, our sense of self-worth.

I don’t think I have anything fresh to say. I just have different words to express how I felt ten years ago. I just hope I have better words ten years from now. We are children of comfort. Our greatest struggle has been finding our purpose or an answer to that question. We go through the motions, diverging at various stages. Marriage is enough, maybe children, or a house and some savings. Dating apps have us believing we are ugly, worthless, and deserve to die alone.

We move from notification to notification, looking for that next hit of dopamine. We are addicted to the threat responses triggered by notifications. We are anxious about the climate, the planet, and our future. But for now, we are just anxious about the extra pound we gained over the holidays. We are living weekend to weekend. This weekend doesn’t count, as the next one will always be more happening.

We have been baited into believing that our lives are worth less if we do not add value to the efficiently lubricated capitalist cycles. We choose sunglasses by different names but feed the same pockets. We believe in the myth of free will. We choose between competing brands. We choose between religions. We choose political leaders. We pick the lesser of evils. Regardless of our choice, we are wrong. Maybe it’s just me. Maybe this is just my ride to be on and my cross to bear. It’s nice to have company. Misery loves company, eh?

Life goes through motions and cycles. If getting through my 20s was a rapid experience, the 30s have been a blur. I write when I feel confused, agitated, fulfilled, or simply feel the need to write. Of late, I have been feeling all of these things simultaneously. I am learning to go with the flow, letting myself believe that the milestones I kept have changed, and it’s okay to look for new ones, even if they are designated.

Dopamine hits find me on the journey: on a boat towards Fort Kochi, in a football game in Singapore, in a drumstick at my favourite restaurant, at the end of a cycle ride in Calicut, at the end of a book written about a ghost roaming Sri Lanka. It has dawned on me that all I had to do was follow the words refined over millennia of wisdom and clarity, “one at a time”. One wave, one breath, one word, one bite, one experience; one at a time. So that when it’s all done, I can also say about life, it’s not nothing.

Till next time.