Atlantic Song

Certain things seem very familiar the first time you encounter them don’t they? It’s such a bizarre concept that everything is incidental. The circular nature of things leads you, necessarily, back towards the familiar through the vague and unknown, we’re never more than a moment away from a wholly different existence, but we retain this tremendous sense of purpose and fact, as though reading a book, predetermined, that’s certainly one of the beautiful things about reality, that we’re able to feel so much comfort and assurity in an existence which is, again, no more defined than this single moment, which is, never more than that, moment to moment.

Real life is intriguing. It’s much more involving at least, simple things, but, sometimes it does seem like I’m the only one who has noticed it’s all meaningless, the only meaning is the one we apply, which lays a great deal of power in the hands of each individual, so it’s a peculiar thing to watch someone who has been gifted the universe waste their power and by extension the universe. I watch people trudge through their lives, they resent most of the things in it, but they just keep trudging, ‘Life’s just like that.’ attitude, the sort of person who hates their job but thinks that’s normal, or they feel depressed and think that’s just how they are, they’ve been that way for as long as they can remember, grasping onto drugs to alter it, if only for a few hours at a time.

People ignore the important and take the unimportant deathly seriously, all so seriously, their painfully boring lives, many don’t even try and establish what is important to them by their own standards, they spent too long listening to every one and thing around them. Now they live their lives like their friends do, their family does, the way life is portrayed in the media, many childish games, people who think love is a series of grand gestures, just because that’s how it’s been shown to them… Most people enjoy telling others how to live, I try not to unless it’s requested or if I’m defending myself from a direct attack from them, but even if I do explain my lifestyle choices I’m treated like I’m an idealist, which is just another term for delusional, I’m treated as though I’m in the grips of a delusion and that I ‘need to come into the real world’ and all I can think of is ‘What, and join you? For what? What can you offer me that’s better than what I have?’ Nobody’s offered me a better life than my own, I’m happy in it, I express this fact, this reality, often, and still many of the people around me behave as though happiness is a freak incidental aberration, or more patronisingly a byproduct of ignorance.

The problem erupts from a lack of desire to understand, most people prefer to be told and to be given than to use their own faculties to learn and to find. I stopped taking school seriously in year 3, I was 8 years old. I did so for my own reasons, and they weren’t great reasons, but they were comprehensive and considered. I remember everyone from then on trying desperately to convince me that I was disadvantaging myself, that I was going to suffer for it later, at first it was "If you don’t start studying now you’ll suffer when you get to High School!" When I got to High School all I got was "If you don’t start studying now you’ll fail your year 12 exams and never get into University" When I got to university all I got was "If you don’t start working now you’ll never get a job and live a comfortable life." When I got a job and started enjoying my economic comfort all I get is "If you don’t start eating carefully, saving carefully, playing the social game of useful contacts thoughtfully, you’ll die early and it’ll be alone and poor." But even death isn’t a reprieve from this sort of person, as they’ll also tell you that "If you don’t take up religion now when you die you’ll go to hell and suffer eternally."

You see my point don’t you? Surely someone else has noticed this right? That these are the desperate justifications the miserable and ignorant use to keep them doing the things they hate, it’s very explicit to me that the common motivation for people is not the promise of success but the fear of failure, people do things to avoid worse things, obviously this distinction doesn’t seem very important to most people, but it fucking well is important, intentions are so important, they are fundamental, your approach often determines the outcome, the same can be said of motivation. A person who lives to avoid failure is unlikely to fail but they’re also unlikely to achieve anything spectacular, anything worth achieving.