|
~ Thomas Carlyle, Philosopher
THAT “SOMETHING” IS INDEED SOMETHING…
T
his story was my story. While I’ve adapted and embellished it to contemporary
life, it’s ghostwritten by my experience. Replace the iPhone with an alarm clock,
a Mercedes with a Mitsubishi, and a cubicle with a limousine cab and you have it:
a familiar story repeated by millions, day after day, year after year. While my
story might not resemble your day, many walls can cage a prison. I had many: a
warehouse, the front seat of a cargo van, a data-entry cubicle, and—how could I
forget—a filthy kitchen in a Chinese restaurant. Your prison could be a
nondescript office in a skyscraper, a suburban precinct, or a hospital operating
room. Even esteemed professionals, doctors and lawyers, have found that the
most comfortably respected prison is still, well, a prison.
However, what’s important are not the walls that frame your story but the
sense that
something
is wrong. A careless whisper guilts your soul; a heartfelt
pleading bemoaning regret and restlessness; a guttural dissonance which you’ve
camouflaged by the mundane and the mediocre. If you’re young, perhaps you
haven’t felt this
something
yet, but you’ve seen it. For example, take this post at
The Fastlane Forum:
I’m nineteen, finishing my second year of college. As I sit around the table with my
family and spin the spaghetti around my fork, it’s clear.
My mother has been working fifteen years at a job she hates. My father has a
masters degree in electrical engineering where he’s worked at NASA making
military hardware. He has been laid off several times and gone unemployed for
months at a stretch. He works now, but I noticed something…
They are not happy. The life is sucked out of them.
No passion. No dreams. No goals.
Just the same thing.
Every.
Single.
Day.
1
Like this student observed, many of these
somethings
are tangible. They can
sit in front of you as two parents dead to the world. My
something
was framed on
a wall: two business degrees that cost me five years and $40,000—yeah, the ones
that got me that great ten-dollar-an-hour job slinging pipe in the Chicago slums.
Your tangible
something
could be your garage, the one with the twenty-three
horsepower riding mower, surely jeering the neighbors envious, and yet, you’re
still unfulfilled and unhappy. Or worse, it’s an air mattress in your parents’
basement, the one you bought for camping that’s become a temporary bed, at
least until you can “figure things out” before your thirty-third birthday.
The other
somethings
are intangible and resonate as white noise—a nagging
chorus of dissonant emotions continually whispering life’s swill.
If you’re younger, one of these whispers could be shame pacified by faux
fame: you’ve earned rock-star status on Xbox Live, but in the real world, you
haven’t earned jack.
Another whisper could be the sting of insignificance: if you were suddenly
kidnapped and beamed to planet Romulus, no one outside your family would
give a shit other than your roommate, who really isn’t missing you—he just
misses your half of the rent payment.
Other whispers are weekly appointments with anguish: the arrival of Sunday
night and its awaiting Monday feels like hide-and-seek with the grim reaper. Or
perhaps the whisper is contempt salted with guilt: you hate your job, your boss,
and your company, but damn, that paycheck is instant amnesia.
If you’re older, the whispers likely stew as frustration: You did everything
right in life as recommended and directed by authority, and yet, no matter how
much you work, save, and scrimp, getting ahead is impossible. Some urgent
expense always looms—the dog needs shots, the car needs tires, or the kids need
cash for a school project.
Other whispers echo as disbelief and skepticism: the bank paid seven cents in
interest last year and, at the rate your 401(k) is growing, you’ll retire by the
twenty-fourth century.
And then there’s perhaps the most haunting whisper: regret. You were going
to do something with your life. Be rich. Famous. A CEO. Independently
successful. A parent who spends time with their kids beyond throwing a pizza on
the dinner table and calling it a night. Yup, you were going to be accomplished,
proud, and happy. But now it’s all a dead dream sitting atop a stack of bills, atop
a desk, atop a mediocre life.
Every something tormenting your daily humdrum hints of a great deception.
Clues to a ruse. An imminent awareness that only needs its confession:
You’re
living, but you aren’t alive.
Your heart beats, but there is no pulse.
Your mind is poisoned, but the toxicology is clean.
Your soul has been stolen, but there are no thieves.
Suspicion has swelled while the incongruity gnaws.
Yes, this wasn’t the life you signed up for.
This wasn’t your plan.
Something is wrong
.
Your soul will resonate its desires and discontent when faced with quiet or minimal
distraction; for example sleeping, showering, or during a massage.
How are you responding to your soul’s voice? Is it denied? Ignored? Muzzled with the
intense demand of meaningless work? Distracted by a television? Honored?
CHAPTER 3
THE MODERN DAY MATRIX:
THE SCRIPT
When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the
masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous
and its speaker a raving lunatic.
Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: |
