Sigh.
Another day with no end. Another day of mindlessness. Another day of droning, comparing myself to the outward reality of others, feeling inadequate. Tomorrow will be yesterday and it is all today. It is always the present.
The uneasy pit in my stomach grows larger with each passing month. Sometimes I can ignore it for a month by inventing a distraction. Something that I can become totally engrossed in and convince myself that this very thing is now the new me. This is the thing that will change my life. It will course-correct me into the path of success. Who knows, perhaps even prosperity. I am not so naive as to believe it will make me happy tomorrow, but it will certainly lead me to happiness soon. Once the world feasts their eyes on my new creation, they will love me. I will be loved.
But it doesn’t last. The self-imposed challenge completed, I am bored. I am bored and feeling more stupid and helpless than I did before my maniacal ego binge. No one loves me who didn’t already before. The pit is still there. It makes me tense. No, I become tense because it is there. Extremely anxious. Ready to blow. It is there and is gnawing on me. Gnawm gnawm gnawm.
I wish I could rip this pit out of me. If I could, I’m certain it would be a cantaloupe-sized, polished ball of sheer black granite. A dense mass of impenetrable matter of whose composition is unclear and whose purpose is unknown. A house of leaves. I would see my reflection. Doubtless I would see anything else.
On days when I’m capable of doing so, I look around and I see two types of people: those that are busy and those that are in pain. I want to believe there truly are happy people out there. After all, we see them on television with their plastic smiles, spray painted body parts, hocking their brand new book, recipe, attention-draining device. We see them in videos and screencasts gleefully shining their brand new turd blossom or explaining how this new technology is a game changer. They’re building religions in You Tube, mind-raping me with their disgusting, one-sided conversations of daily bullshit.
But they’re just busy. Distracted. When I see them, they too are totally engrossed in what they’re doing. Doping their pit. Disconnecting it from their nervous system by blocking its receptors with large doses of ego.
And they’ll be in pain soon. It’s a certainty. They’ll be in their car, facade removed, when the pit will wake up. “Hey!”, it says. “What the fuck was that? Where was I? You drug me again? Well, back to work.” And it will reopen that portal to the underworld. The demons will be back. There will be no Virgil to guide.
For those not so lost in the glamor of vanity, they have outsourced their pit to a third-party. This agent of truth tells them that they deserve their pain for the bad things they have done or will do. Repent, repent, repent … leave a small donation.
The Dali Llama keeps his pit distracted with spiritual hubris. His disciples distract themselves with trying to be oh so enlightened as he. The pope’s pit is telling him to stop lying. He knows he’s going to hell. The yogi. The master. Their herds. They’re all the same. It’s all the same. Be the one or waste your time trying to become it. Not doing so will awaken the pit.
I’ll never see a happy person. Either they don’t exist or they’ve succeeded and have no need to talk to me about it. It’s a catch 22 on a universal scale. A divine comedy.
No, from my perspective we’re all so fucking pathetic. Distracting our pit is all we want to do. It’s all we can do. We all recognize this pit. We all know it’s there. There are self-help books written to address it. We’re told to find the color of our parachute, drop everything and become one with the universe, be a better lover, eat less, eat more, work on motorcycles, want less, give more. There are biographies, fictions, reference materials, all written by those who want to ignore their pit. There are those who read both and still won’t escape.
We invent empty slogans like “Happiness is something you are, not something you obtain” to trick ourselves into thinking we know what the fuck the universe wants and how to get there. We slap them on shirts and bumper stickers. We put them in cards that we distractingly give to others knowing it won’t remove their pit.
We make banners with them, “Happy Birthday” or “Welcome Home”. We celebrate our distraction and then go back to our suffering.
We are wrong. I am wrong.
We talk about it. We see psychiatrists and psychologists who are trained in distraction. Agents of illusion. At times they seem to help some of us. They’re really just helping those with oversized pits shrink theirs back down to socially acceptable levels of pain and suffering. Our society can only handle so much truth.
We get jobs. We need them to survive, to keep our families alive. We really just need them so that we can buy more distraction until we’re dead. To ease that pain we decide we want jobs that make us feel like we’re doing something good. “Fuck government. Fuck advertising. I want to do something that matters!” Again, more distraction and this is of the worst kind. Double think. Life sucks because our job sucks because our life sucked. We trick ourselves into tricking ourselves.
I want to ask myself what my pit wants from me? Why is it that vapid exercises are my only outlet? Why am I left feeling hollow? When do I feel happy? When do I feel loved? But it’s pointless. Those questions are hollow in that I have to ask them at all. I’m grasping at straws while drowning in the whirlpool of a galactic opera.
We all die. We are dead.
