Life has been whizzing past so rapidly for the past couple of weeks or so. I have been wandering around, eating, sleeping, working, zombie-like, hardly knowing what I am doing, hardly conscious of what needs to be done, apart from the daily dose of work that desperately awaits completion before the day is done. And today, I woke up, only for a while. I suspect that I am still awake, strangely. But tomorrow, I shall sleep walk again.
It just struck me that we might as well be rodents, running around in a wheel, chasing after a piece of cheese that is hung above us, taunting, tempting, seducing and we trample the wheel, not knowing why, but knowing only that we HAVE to do so, perhaps because the wheel is there and other rodents are doing the same maybe? Perhaps because other more nosy rodents come up to you and question you if you do not trample the wheel? Maybe. Of course, earning a living is important in a country where buying a loaf of bread to feed one's family requires the selling of one's own body organs as well as the neighbor's and etc and the importance of a career path is very well understood in a society where "I do not have an idea about getting a job yet" rises many a Sri Lankan "sooo's" and "tsks" and a whole series of disapproving looks directed at the ground which screams "what a pathetic looser" in bold capitals right to the face. But still, with the careers blooming, social statuses flourishing and brandished like lightsabers from Star Wars universe and us working our rear ends off to just to make the ends meet, when do we get to 'live'? Does 'living' suddenly metamorphose in to work, work, work and work (a more 'important sounding word for this pathetic state would be known as a 'career path' ) suddenly once we reach our adult age?
And what exactly do I mean by 'living' you ask. Of course, I too am quite clueless of what 'living' is exactly (regardless of the philosophical image of a hermit like creature with floor length hair and overgrown beard, isolated cabin in the middle of the woods, scribbling away at one scrap of paper after another from dusk to noon and etc or images of youth shooting drugs and doing booze till they squirm about in their own vomit, half naked, hyperactive women brandishing deranged smiles across their faces jumping up and down on a trampoline and etc that you tend to get in your head) However, I do question this rat race we are running, this constant need of achieving something great and once we achieve that finally, the need to achieve something great-ER. It never ends.
What happens when we achieve the greatest thing there is to achieve? What happens when we have reached the summit of the mountain of social and financial hierarchy? What happens after we have gotten the most beautiful and the most exquisite of all jewelry that there is? What happens after we have gotten the best set of wheels that money can buy or the best collection of cloths that one can ever own? We only wear one piece of clothing at a time, only a few pieces of jewelry at a time, we only drive one vehicle at a time. However, after one has achieved all that, then what? Where do we go from there?
I have been feeling like a computer programmed zombie who operates according to the whims and fancies of some other malicious force lately. I want to wake up, I NEED to wake up more than anything else. But sometimes, falling in to routine, following the herd without questioning, without doubting seems like a good, feasible and a very much uncomplex solution to a lot of problems I have seen. Thinking too much, saying too much have gotten me in to so much of trouble after which I trained myself not to think much, not to seek much, not to ask much, specially things that I do not want to hear or know, things that would hurt me deeply if only I heard, if only I knew. But I want to wake up now. I want to know. I want to question. I want to feel that I am here for a reason other than to run round and round on a hamster wheel.
I am in no position to preach about the absurdity of the insatiable quality of human nature or such as I myself is in a position of conflict. What I need to do now is to wake up from this half-asleep state and look around with unglazed eyes. I do not know where it will get me or what it will do, but right now, I know that I need to hold on to something real, I need to feel alive which I have not felt in a very long time.
I think I'l just shut up now. Sigh.........
