Jungtina Jamir
IN THE BEGINNING:
You’ll take up a hobby and get so good at it that people will admire you without knowing who you are.
For me, I could take up computers. I did. I learned “how-to- graphic” after I ‘decided’ that my hands would always be three inches away from a pencil, I cannot draw. I got money from my parents; paid every fee that could have got me a Pearl MMX148 instead.
If you were to walk into the room while I fiddle with the computer, you would have to pretend to be appreciative like some people pretend to, when the fact is that they don’t even like you in the first place. As soon as my fingers touches the keys on the board, raw music would flow on the not so expensive stereo attached onto the computer. My world is now flowing as the shadows touch the floor.
I believe that this is how it is for many!
THE POINT:
I live here. My loved ones live here. We all live here. It’s a paradise to the unknown! I realized that nothing could be okay when I was leaving for work on a cold Tuesday afternoon. No one will care that it was cold or that it was Tuesday, but setting the scene is often important for the careless and the uncaring.
I walked in to a coffee shop, a place I often go. My coffee was releasing a nice brush of steam onto my face. The stereo inside the shop was blaring hard rock but I was not listening to the music. My eyes were focused on the coffee cup and I picked up my coffee and pressed it to my lips. It is my daily ritual; but you should know that I don’t like coffee.
Maybe you are not feeling what I feel. Perhaps it is because you are not as angry as I am. When I come home from work, I would turn on the television and try to cry, unsuccessfully. After I am annoyed with my inability to feel human, I would listen to music and try to sleep. This is when the tears would fall. This is where I would wish I was not human and regret the purpose of our existence/my existence. Do we even know that we have a purpose? Aren’t we just pawns of the game making history? Didn’t we start something we could possibly never end? Critical I may be. I am not sorry.
I could say that I have lost faith in humanity because I don’t like coffee much anyway. I don’t like my job. I don’t like my friends or my desk. I like living alone, and that is my one pleasure in life.
I am telling you that one day you’ll wake up and stop looking around as if it would all be okay if only some brilliant change could take place.
The next day, you’ll forget that that brilliant change could have ever existed.
After that, you’ll forget what you wanted to change in the first place.
You’ll start waking up at obscene hours to do meaningless things that somehow get you a lifetime’s fool award. Who cares anyway! According to you, awards are meaningless too. It will buzz a bell in your head. This buzz, according to you, is the right answer to every problem in the world. World hunger’s solution is your buzz. Fixing the family car is your buzz. Aids/HIV is your buzz. Peace is your buzz. Cleaning your locality is your buzz. But someone else’s buzz, regardless of how it’s obtained, is nothing.
You’ll stop doing what’s accepted as “the right thing to do.” This could include showering daily, eating healthy foods, cleaning up your room. Everyone who would go crazy without doing these things is wrong. However, if you would go crazy without doing these things, whoever stops is wrong.
Nothing I say will change a thing. But I am right. All I say makes sense and I know I am right. But to the eyes of many, I am just as wrong as I think you are.
Talk about satire!
