Conflicted

Sometimes, I have so many thoughts that I never say out loud. Never good, never bad: Just a melancholic reasoning of everything around me that it feels like nobody can understand. I have friends who I can count on when something is wrong, but I never tell them everything I want to say. I’ve found outlets in art, in writing, even in dance; and yet, nothing satisfies me. I always just want to talk to a real person: Yet I never do. I don’t even know anymore: I just feel like a bottle of ideas that could burst at any time. I’m in a place where I know that no matter what I do, no matter who I talk to, no matter what I accomplish, in the grand scheme of things? It won’t matter. If I cured cancer today, I’d be celebrated throughout the world. But the earth is around for thousands, millions of years; and probably will be for more. But after 100 or so, the children of the world would have taken cancer for granted, for if there is no need to be met, why do they care? And why should they, really? Why to I, in 2022, have to care about the guy that founded the U.S, or the first people to use the Pythagorean Theorem? Sure, one needs to look to the past to see the future, but the children of today have bigger, more current issues to face? I shouldn’t feel bad for something my ancestors did years before I was born, right?

So, inevitably, I end up not caring about the world’s futility. It’s almost soul crushing sometimes to always know that nothing I do is worth it, but part of me thinks that this is human instinct. We have religion, we have societal marks of accomplishment, we have aspirations. The early colonists had Manifest Destiny, and the founding fathers had “The New World.” Benchmark after benchmark, and no matter how much you do, people eventually won’t care. So, what’s the point in pleasing somebody else? I don’t want to be accomplished, successful, or even make a lot of money. I just want to be happy, and if I do that, THEN my life will mean something. In a way, I pity those who pursue success in place of happiness. They may at times misunderstand what they want, and why they want it. Because of this, they lives their lives in a lie, effectively wasting until they die, or have wasted their youth chasing after a future that is hollow and fake: A world of success they think they love until they realize that it won’t make any impact on the world around them. Life goes on, and their’s sadly won’t; at least not long enough for them to realize that life has more to offer than the surface level successes and paths we take to pretend like our lives mean anything to the universe.

This may be an unpopular opinion, but part of me sees some religions as almost self-centered in a way. It’s the pinnacle of someone desperately grasping for anything that gives their life meaning, ultimately founded on nothing as their “faith” is in that of which they cannot prove. As do those who seek success for success’s sake waste their years, so do those who spend hours over their years focused on what could happen after death- praying to an entity only heard of by word of mouth to improve their lives as if that will be any more helpful than putting in the work. “God only helps those who work for it” is nonsense to me: If you worked for it, you’ve earned it with or without the help of this so called creator. So sure, I choose to respect any harmless religion that respects mine, and some of my best friends are devotedly religious, but I have to disagree that it’s even healthy to believe in gods. The only thing keeping me from talking to those I care about is stigma: A world where religiousness is so prominent, I can literally use the term “sacreligous” to describe why nobody questions it! Sounds a little like a non-monetarily motivated pyramid scheme to me. I dunno, maybe I’m just overthinking it again. I tend to do that more than I’d like.