And here we are in another tomorrow. Still pondering the confounding nature of living and what to do about it. There are some signs of hope and yet there is still so much in the world that makes you want to go, “Eeeeyuck”. As for me, I didn’t hurt anybody today. A trend that I try to make real. I didn’t hurt anyone today. A low bar, but it’s more than a lot of people can say.
When I think about the world I would like to live in the first word that comes to mind is safe. Then joy. I would love to live in a safer world, but it does not seem that other people navigate living with the intention to avoid being harmful. Everyone is not a horrible monster, however, I do notice that people can always seem to find an excuse to hurt other people if they are benefiting. In ways big and small. In some parts of the world people are surviving atrocities. Sudan is in stage 5 famine. Palestinians in Gaza are supposed to have a ceasefire, yet they continue to be killed and are still getting no aid. Multiple countries are currently on fire because the youth are rising up against age old corruption. The world is not currently safe. I say that as a person privileged enough to be insulated from a lot of the dangers. Even living in the Chicagoland area and hearing about how ICE is moving, snatching people up, citizens or not, I have only heard the stories and seen the videos. On my daily travels I do not personally encounter very much violence directly. I am not violent, nor do I surround myself with people who really are. As I have stated I am privileged. Not in having money, that’s not true at all, but in not having to live in the level of fear and devastation that others are currently having to live in.
I would love nothing more than to stop living in a world where sadists have so much power and ability to play out their harm for profit and more power. I would love to simply be able to write and listen to music and enjoy the beauty of nature and travel and love and learn and laugh and see incredible things. I would love to live differently, however, I was born in unprecedented times and those times do not seem to want to become precedented anytime soon. I was born before cell phones. We had a house phone growing up. There were also pay phones. I remember dial up. I remember looking for stuff in the yellow pages. Listening to the radio to hear songs that I liked. Watching the TV Guide channel to see what was on. Saving things on floppy disks. My first game system was a Sega genesis, then a Super nintendo then Nintendo 64 then playstation, playstation 2, xbox, xbox 360. Things have changed so much in my 34 years of living. I grew up preparing for a world that was already rapidly going away. So much of what I was taught has been revealed as inaccurate. I made the mistake of learning too much, now I understand the world in ways that simultaneously let’s me know that so much is possible while making me feel like nothing really matters. Bouncing between nihilism, existentialism, and absurdism. Feeling the freedom of being able to make what I want of my life while feeling trapped in a world that wants me to do its bidding. What a world!
But I continue to think, which is particularly hard when we have so much being thrown at us all day every day now. I consciously stay off of TikTok for times throughout the week so that I’m not overloaded. We are taking in more than we have the ability to fully process. All of that mental stimulation, but we’re holding on to only a portion of it. My algorithm is mostly music, historical facts, African culture, art, languages, and the few funnies I allow myself to take the edge off. Yet I continue to make in the ways that I can and try to think myself into better. Meeting another day which I hope will bring about some new brick to be laid down on my pathway to where I would like to go. Or how I would like to live.
But in the meantime I write, which I am realizing in and of itself is a dream come true. May tomorrow bring about new revelations to make a new fixture in a better world. Let’s see if I can continue returning here to chart it out…
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