A moment of clarity?

I’ve been battling a feeling of unrest over the course of this year that rather than being replaced by my usual ‘Get up and smile’-attitude is getting louder.

Had dinner with a friend two nights ago and heard myself saying things that I have never said before. And I meant it. Fact is, I could have gone on saying more, but halfway through I got overwhelmed and tired, so I decided to break it off and head home to bed.

Now I’ve been up since 2.30am and can’t shut up the voice inside enough in order to fall back into sleep. So, guess it’s time to write.

I feel as if I’ve gotten myself onto a conveyor belt that is touring me through the this world called life. Like a child, I am looking around at the things happening on this conveyor belt but also around it, in this place called world. And I am not liking what I see. Worse, I feel as if I’m in a wrong place with a subconscious feeling of oxygen supply being cut of as I pass through denser and more polluted grounds.

I’m not talking about global warming (although I could add that to the list). I am talking about seeing people like myself, who were born into this life for a purpose (for if there wasn’t one, we wouldn’t be here). But somehow they’ve completely lost themselves along the way and are walking around extremely busy resembling robots with a ‘chip loose’. Strange thing is, when I start a conversation with them, often I can hear the human voice inside, but once that conversation subsides, they are back to pluckering around. Once in a while I’ll come across a human, but they are too few and far between. From where I’m standing it looks like a lost world. The pictures I see disturb me to no end, find me wanting to shake sense into this mess.

We have sidewalks where fellow humans sit on cold, wet stones in worn clothing holding out their bare hands in hopes of getting something from the stream of people who have their ears plugged with headphones or their minds distracted with heaps of paper that will greet them in their office world, requiring decisions weighing as much as any fundamentally life changing one.

We have lives that evolve around what to buy, what to wear, what to watch on TV, knowing more about some reality show than our own lives. This just has to be the absolutely most barbaric thing, to watch fellow humans make a fool of themselves in search of some internal or external reward and call it entertainment. Some days I wonder whether we actually realise that we are looking at ourselves. But it isn’t just reality shows. It’s the entire media circus that has successfully brainwashed us . And just to be realistic, the media isn’t just some obscure ‘thing’. It is run by – you guessed it – us.

All those ‘bad’ things are run by us. I’m so tired about of listening to the complaints about politicians, cooperations, the rich, the powerful, religions, the system, society, you name it. All diversions from one blunt reality: it is us. And even that leaves too much room for hiding. It is you. It is me.

And we are drowning. We are drowning in stuff we don’t need but rather than dealing with that, we figure we just get more stuff to distract us from the reality that the more stuff we have around us, the less we can feel what is inside us. And then, we rush to sign up for classes, Yoga, Meditation, Tai Chi, Pilates teaching us to breathe again. The same with fitness classes, we’ve spent so much of our head space on inventing easier ways to do things and so much money on believing that they do, that now some external force has to drill us into using our muscles. Obesity isn’t just being bigger. It’s the fact that people who don’t look overweight at all have become so sedate that their body fat in comparison to their muscles show rates that are considered obese.

I’m to the point that stores cause me anxiety, millions of invisible hands reaching out to have me load up with more stuff: clothes, kitchen appliances, electronics, cleaning products and bathroom supplies. I walk around my house in an attempt to organise and really, what I really feel like is getting a huge big dumpster and tossing everything. I’m sick and tired of ‘stuff’. Literally sick and tired. (We aren’t really surprised at the news flash that plastic is making us sick, are we?) Trouble is, stuff just doesn’t disappear. It turns to garbage. Recycling my a..!

The first rays of the new day are breaking through the window and I look outside. It is still quiet. I look at the computer screen and shake my head. What am I doing here?

I grab the dog and head outside for a long walk.

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~ by spasmicallyperfect on August 23, 2008.