Sorry, Finish Line is The Other Way

What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point?
I'm never gonna make it, aren't I?

No. I will not back down. Ridiculed and alone, yet I'm still standing. I drew my breath sharper, letting the cool air fill my lungs. I readied my stance, preparing for an attack. The grip of my right hand on my ever loyal sword tightened. Although I am the only one in the world believing this, I will never back down.

Or so I thought. I put my pen down, exhaling slowly. Yet another fantasy, and then back to reality.

I keep avoiding things that I should take responsibility of. I dream of nightmare when the thought occurs, but only when I encounter its remnant or the trace of existence. It's an everlasting homework with prolonged deadline that I stack and leave rotten in the backyard, to be wet with rainfall and singed by the sunlight.

"What have you been doing this past year?" that question kept lingering and smacking the back of my head like a guilt sledgehammer.
I think, all I've been doing this past year is slacking off... but also acquainting myself with the cold reality beyond the classroom walls.

The question trailed off. My mind was a blur. My ears were ringing. My hands shaking.

Ah, I can't deal with this anymore... One question and I was already about to burst into tears. I'm weak.

And weaklings don't get to choose the way they die.

-

I know that the right thing to do now is to work on the stuff that I abandon, and starting now. Soon. Pronto.
I need to assembly the material before the end of this week.
I have to catch up with my task.
I ought to consult on my difficulties instead of bailing.
I should pick up that phone and book another psychologist consultation.
I got to grow up and get my shit together.

Easier said than done. Despite a hundred reasons to improve better as a person, I still can't get out of the bed.
I wonder how long it would take for me to realize this living model does not make any sense?
I wonder when will be my turning point in life to think, "hell, I should act now!"

I haven't been sober. I'm still resisting, refusing to see things clearly.
I wish I was sober.
Maybe, another cry.
Maybe, another cut.
Then I'll cope. Then I'll sober up.

That... never happens, does it?

When will I ever stop running the wrong direction?

Resistance Member of The Universal Cause

There's absolutely no rhyme or reason as to why I should be here. Not metaphorically. Not literally. Not essentially. Not existentially. Nothing.

I have had my doubts about future for quite some time now. The previously optimistic utopian soul, corrupted easily by a simple glance of reality. Not even the morbid ones, just ones not par to my expectation. I'm not who I think I am, and I don't think I will ever know who I really am.

In science there's this thing called model theory. It stated that model is how we collectively perceive the natural state of reality. Some philosophers might argue that our brain capability is limited, our senses easily fooled, and we might never perceive reality as it actually is given our limitations. As far as models are concerned, it doesn't matter if the explanation is ontologically 'objects as it is' or not; if it works, it works, and it is to be accepted. Unless there's a better model developed, of course.

An example of this is the model of atom. We all have probably seen illustration of an atom being a bunch of nuclei particles grouped together in the middle, then surrounded by electrons moving in orbits. This is Niels Bohr's atomic model, and as fun and easy it is to think of atoms this way, it had been discovered that it's not entirely precise. Theory of quantum physics came along and it had been established that atomic constituents - electron, proton, and neutron - don't retain the round, deterministic shape. Instead, they take form as both particle and waves - which are practically not visible to human eyes - making the previously conversation-friendly form of atom resembling that of our solar system becomes far more complicated, only sufficiently represented by intricate constants and fragile probability.

Of course, the real question now is: does model theory also work on perceiving people or only for tangible phenomena generally studied in natural science?

My personal answer is yes. If humankind had been having difficulties in comprehending the seemingly perceivable things such as the planets and atoms that they need to develop a mental model, why wouldn't they do it for even more complex phenomena concerning human and their extremely unpredictable behavior?

For the longest time, like it or not, I have been developing positivistic view towards life. I believe that everything is quantifiable to some extent. Laziness? Inertia. Personal opinion? Brain waves. Love? Chemical reaction. Chaos? Entropy. Rather than two sides of the same coin of human perspective, I treat this view as truth. But of course, this is misleading.

This thought only arise because I've been living as the golden pioneering child of the new milennia. Just like communism wouldn't have worked without technological advent in information that enabled centralization (spoiler alert - it's still not working), positive attitude towards the power of quantification wouldn't have been enabled without engineering advancement and rise of silicon brain. Right now each of us own a powerful gadget on the back of our pocket, capable of measuring the surrounding temperature, locating our precise coordinate, all the while sending signal waves to connect us with people from the other side of the world.

It becomes a problem when this perspective is treated as the mere truth to life. Scientists most probably will argue that empirical evidence and proper experiments are the way to the ultimate truth. Sadly, even the brightest of thinkers will still somehow drive towards a brick wall. What if we encounter this one thing we seemingly can't measure? Is it then proven as nonexistent? Or is it just that we haven't found a way to figure out how to measure it?

What is consciousness?

It's been the mystery at the bottom of science for quite a while now. As the consensus of human behavior can be explained through the tracing of chemical traits flow in the brain, consciousness seems to be closing in to something akin to a mere myth. There's no 'deeper meaning' to our existence; it's just chemical loss and gain. Consciousness does not exist. We have no 'central core' to our thoughts and beliefs.

This notion, just like relationship, requires compromise. I personally still deny this sudden accusation that we have no essence as a humankind; nothing that sets us apart from animals. My rigid belief on quantification that supposed to support this idea seems contradictory to my spiritual health. I'm at a crossroad. I compromise towards the concept that this 'consciousness' thing is inquantifiable. The 'symptom' is measurable, but the 'cause' itself is beyond our sensible explanation. I want to make peace with the notion that not everything is measurable - maybe not yet, maybe not ever. Maybe the time where it would make sense is not now, maybe not ever. Perhaps it's something beyond our organic brain's limitation - just like trying to imagine a 10th dimension or seeing electromagnetic waves outside the visible spectrum.

It's always such a blast to think about metaphysical wonders like this, but I'm afraid this is only a modern-time exercise in futility. The daydream of millenial culture. The masturbatory ego of cognitive exhibition. It's easy to point fingers at people who think like this (me) and remark to them (me), "Who cares?"

The answer, my friend, is "Nobody."

No one cares about this writing. No one cares about how I as a member of society spend my Monday night stargazing upon the pollution-ridden urban sky. No one cares about your pessimistic take on life unless they're your equally pathetic friend. No one cares about our future as humankind other than those who attempted to shape it. And the universe certainly doesn't give a damn about us.

There's no reason for any of us to be here. But who cares? You're still here anyway. Might as well make it fun and worthy while you're at it.

Last night before going to sleep I prayed to God to never wake me up.

But He did. Twice. Or three times. Before I fully opened my eyes at 8 AM and realize He didn’t give me what I want.

After my regular afternoon prayer, I broke down and curled up on the mat. I couldn’t concentrate on my prayer. I couldn’t think, only feel the irresistible urge to cry, and cry again. I laid down on the soft mat and faced my room ceiling. I prayed again, God, please do not wake me up again this time.

But I knew deep down, as I closed my eyes and another batch of tears rolled down my cheek, that it was not happening. It didn’t matter that I cried as hard as possible, or wished as willfully as I could, my eyes would soon open yet again without permission, without regard to what I want or what I didn’t want. Unless there was something remarkably wrong in my brain’s wire design, I would wake up and then find I’ve already wasted most of my day feeling sorry for myself.

It’s the way my body worked and had always been working. It’s the way my brain worked and had always been working. Without some extraordinary power to alter this situation, the miraculous yearning to never wake up is never going to happen. Which, it had never done, and wasn’t going to happen to me anytime soon.

There was absolutely no reason for God to fulfill this wish of mine. I wasn’t special in any way. In fact, the reality that I’m lying on other people’s bedroom floor crying is one evidence proving it. Shouldn’t I be out there and changing the world, as they pointed out, in my prime? Shouldn’t I not be feeling like a useless piece of trash all the time, all these years? Guilt-ridden, I still laid unmoving while a part of my brain pestered me with unreasonable thought and epic tales of adventure I would never accomplish.

Maybe this was the wrong request to wish upon. Maybe He just didn’t care about me. Maybe He just didn’t exist to fulfill my wish. Or maybe, this is not how He works?

Perhaps, instead of asking Him to do it for me, what I should do is to just do it myself and ask for forgiveness, right?

Monkey Business

Happy Saturday, folks! I hope your weekend is filled with joy and love and distractions that can reset your mood to prepare for another week of being a cog in the machine! Ah, that was grim. Excellent. Let's start.

I haven't written much nowadays. It's not that I don't write, it's just I can never seem to finish what I started (shocker). The ideas came and gone very briefly, like fireflies in the middle of the night. This was not new, but the amount of times this happened nowadays are distracting to the point it annoys me so much. It's like talking to someone who has a hushed voice you had difficulty hearing, and when you ask them to repeat it they just dropped the conversation right away.

It's a funny thing, human brain. The one organ that controls everything going on inside our body, and it couldn't even follow a simple plan it made for itself. All possible musings, inspiration, creation, empire, technology, industry, and it comes down to a frail little blog page. Sometimes I hate how contradictory my brain could be; it amused me with tales of humankind's accomplishment throughout the millenia thanks to its evolutionary trait, sprouting a bean of hope that I could achieve whatever I put my mind to it, and a few electric currents later it decided that getting out of bed isn't worth it.

Our brain has been what excels us as a species, a product of millions of years of evolution, but it's still a monkey brain. It has undergone a slow yet steady process that managed to get us where we are right now, but it's not pefect. No matter how much you trust your brain to make difficult decisions for you, it's not a place to store memory. That's why it helps to be organized. Keep physical (or digital, as in the norm of our age) copies of notes.

So now upon coming to the conclusion that the whole 'ah fuck I can't write' thing was not my failure as a civilized person but instead it's just the way our organ is, I've been starting a habit to take notes whenever an idea pops up. Fragments of sentences, ridiculous punchlines, inspirational quotes, silly questions, whatever. This might seem like common sense to you lot that it's inane to even talk about it, or suggest it, but it helps. Before, I usually dismissed ideas when they're just tiny unblossomed buds, ensuring myself they weren't ready to be written yet. Thus when the time (and mood) comes to sit down and face the blank canvas of word processing software, I had to rack my neurons running, scampering to find those ideas in hidden little mind shelves. Sometimes it worked, and some of my best (subjective, of course) writings were done this way, but I realized that it took a lot of energy, and I got burnt out pretty fast.

Of course, not saying this is the ultimate method to productive writing, but at least there was less effort in scouring through the mind shelves. As you see, so far I have listed 18 titles in the working, yet still no posts cooking in my blog dashboard kitchen. 

I'm trying my best to get them done, because even with this method my monkey brain still finds its way to get distracted, jumping from one topic to another, and mixing up my electrochemical productivity according to its whim. But that's just the way of progress. Once you find a solution to something, you will always find more problems waiting ahead.

My apology about the gloom intro. You might be a cog in the machine, but that's only because it's what the macro system is capable of seeing you. After all, one could argue that we're all just a tiny speck of dust in the universe, yet we could still knit our own jumper of meaning nevertheless.

Jolly weekend to you all!

My Human Pet

My human pet has been acting strange lately. She gets up at around 3 AM and goes straight to the kitchen downstairs to cook. She fills the water jug, eats and hydrates. She goes to sleep after some kind of religious ritual and wakes up at late noon. That's okay, I usually also wake up at late noon, but what's weird is that she doesn't brew us a cup of coffee, or order takeout for lunch as per usual. It seems like she's trying out a new diet fad..

..Or being brainwashed into an automaton. Because aside from the out-of-place eating period, she also develops brand new habits she follows to a T. She takes a long walk and sometimes stays out until the morning comes. She keeps a journal and writes important dates. She smiles at people and engages in small talks. Just not to me. She ignored me in a way that if we were social media mutuals, I'm getting blocked.

I'm starting to see a pattern where she's trying to transform into a sensible, functional human being. It started not so long ago, but the progress is uncanny. She does it well, too well I might say, that if I still have a shroud of idea left of who she was, I'd say this was just a phase in which she would eventually come back to me running.

I would like to be ecstatic to learn that she's turning into a 'better person', or so the term dictated. I just wish she would consult to me first, so that I'm not feeling left in the dark, especially concerning the sudden coffee cutback. She barely talks to me in the past week that I get no vote in deciding what to do.

Don't get me wrong; the long walks are fun, the talks with people are pleasant, and the cooking is.. uh.. interesting (spoiler: it's bad but at least it's edible). But I miss spending hours with her just staring at the ceiling and start a revolution from our bedroom, a cup of hot anxiety juice by our side. I miss singing sad lofi rock songs to the top of our lungs. I miss vaguely talking to her about our pie-in-the-sky dreams that may or may not happen, yet it's amusing to entertain the notion anyway. And this was only after she left me in a week or so.

But right now if she decides to take a more realistic approach to her life and habits, I would try my best to support her in any way I can. I just... probably need a few moments, days (or months?) to adjust myself to her. I wish her luck in proceeding onto this new journey, and I sincerely hope this is not only a phase, because if she's going to run, I want her to run forward, not back to me. 

This time, I'm running to her. And we'll march on together.

I Bought Her A Cake

Happy birthday to me! Usually I don't celebrate personal anniversary like this, but yesterday was an absolute exception. After brewing my morning coffee, I was preparing to write a blog update, when I look at the message in my close friends' group chat. They were planning to meet up in the evening after they're finished with work, so I joined since I had nothing planned anyway. Little did I know it was a surprise party, damn. We had good dinner in a barbeque joint, although they forced me to pay the bill, as was the custom in this cursed country -_- Afterwards though, we went to a karaoke place which I joined upon their promise not to make me pay everything again. I sang a few Fall Out Boy songs before they handed me a present and a cake, and sang me a karaoke version of Happy Birthday! Holy. Crap. Then we sang some more until very late at night. When I got home, I opened the box to see that they gifted me a copy of Haruki Murakami's latest book, signed by the author himself. 

Best birthday ever.

-

But of course, it didn't happen. 

None of it was real. I don't have a close friends group chat anymore. I woke up at 10 and felt useless, as is the custom in this cursed personal room. I had a headache and sore throat. I ordered a takeout for both lunch and dinner. I never left the house that day. I didn't meet anyone. No barbeque restaurant. No karaoke bar. No friends.

When I was still in school (not college), birthdays were pretty exciting. It's just like any other day where I go to classes and get homework, but afterwards I get to hang out with my friends at a pizza place, and occasionally get gifts (although it's not heavily expected). Pizza birthday party was kind of a regular thing in my school years.

When I reached a certain age, though, birthdays become sort of an introspection day. With a pinch of denials. I get a few birthday wishes, reminding me of how I'm turning older. My inspector brain scolded me because I haven't done anything remotely impressive in the past couple of years, nagging me for being lazy (which, come to think of it, also partially its fault) and underachieving. I curl up in bed at night reminiscing my regrets and mistakes, and how the golden years seem to have passed me by and I'm only left with this rotten corpse with hollow interior.

But of course, it didn't happen.

Or did it?

So Long and Goodbye

Just recently, I came across a blog post written by one of my favorite internet persona, CGP Grey, titled “I Have Died Many Times”. Now, if you’re a bit like me and your YouTube home page is representative of your interest, then you might have known or watched one of his videos. He makes educational – maybe stretching a little, more like informative – stick-figure-based videos, the most popular one titled “The Difference Between UK, GB,and England Explained”, which was coincidentally also his first video that I watched. I really like his explanation of things in simple manner, while trying to be as precise as possible, and his insight of our today world, and I just have to say that many his views resonate with mine. 

But I digress.

He also writes blog, and as I mentioned previously, one which titled “I Have Died Many Times”. Of course my first thought was “reincarnation?” but no, it’s not in-the-ground dead. The death of no longer existing. Our past selves? They died, along with faded memory and gradually replaced mind. He wrote how our past selves are like Peloponnesian War, necessary to shape who we are today, yet irrelevant.

This is why we so often look back at the thoughts and actions of our younger selves with incomprehension. Who was that person? Just who did all those stupid things? Just who had those foreign thoughts? Someone else did.

On several occasion I’m recalled of something ridiculous or awkward I had done or said (or wrote) a few years back, and it’s a relief to have this idea of it wasn’t me. We all know that period in our teenage years we don’t want to acknowledge. It’s not necessarily denial, or running away, but it’s much more liberating to address those imprudent moments in third person’s point of view instead of carrying the burden of your former self.

I don’t know why the idea of “my past selves are dead” is much more appealing to my mind than “let the bygones be bygones”. I reflect a lot on my past, frequently in regret, and I have to say… it’s not pretty. I long for a chance to go back and undo my bad decisions, cherish more of the wonderful moments, pursue for further and better opportunities; anything to get me off this… present void. Perhaps due to my diligently-fostered procrastination habit, I lost an important concept of time; a miscalculated prediction that I can always delay stuff because one opportunity may come again another day. Spoiler, past me: it’s not always the case.

The concept of death, on the other hand, I can imagine better. It’s more final, and easier to let go. You’re free from the sins of your stupid childhood smoking self. You’re dismissed from people’s expectation of your overachiever high school self. You’re no longer responsible for the cookie-stealing and wrist-cutting edgy teenage you. Because they’re not you. Not anymore, they’re dead.

With this newfound perspective, I find myself sometimes reflect with a smile, I’m so glad she died. Some death was swift and peaceful, some was hard and long; some didn’t go without a fight and left marks, but they all died. Some will be missed, though.

Of course this is not to say that you will never be held accountable for whatever wrong you’ve done to people in the past. Personally, I think this is one great perspective to make peace with my history and minimalize regrets.

And the person writing this post? She too, will be dead in several spans of time, or maybe tomorrow, whether it’s literal or existential is up for discussion, but dead nonetheless. Right now she hasn’t thought much of her future, even doubting the possibility of her existence, but conceptualizing her death gives her a new pair of shoes to tread with. Change is death; and an essential one, that is.

It's too easy to view others as monolithic, unchanging.

But that's not our nature: we are all the phoenix.

I have died many times, and so have you.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna go get that quote tattooed on my arm.

Did I just make a blog post talking about a blog post? Yes. Yes, I did.