Wednesday, November 15, 2017

One Hundred and Fifty Two

I wasn’t going to write again.  I was going to lie down, go to sleep and never wake up.  Then Don called and asked me to come back to work. 

Don thought he was doing me a favor, so it would have been rude of me to refuse.  But that’s not why I came back.

I tried to kill myself after she died, and was preparing to try again when Don called and offered me a job.  And then the next time I was preparing to kill myself, he called again.  I know it’s only a coincidence, but it’s uncanny.

The company is dying, so it’s a comfortable place for me to be.  Almost everyone I worked with eight years ago is gone now, and the few who remain know it has no future, so it’s quiet as a funeral.  The only sounds are when Bob or I tell each other a joke, and we both chuckle.     

Saturday, November 4, 2017

One Hundred and Fifty One

Everyone wants to know the truth, and no one wants to know the truth. This is a paradox to those who imagine they must want one or the other, but not both. It’s always both.

Whatever we imagine the truth to be, it’s always different. Sometimes it’s better than what we imagine, and sometimes worse; but it’s never what we want because we don’t know ourselves well enough to know what we want.

What people want most, and fear most, is to know the truth. Knowing they're not what they imagine themselves to be, they decide it’s better not to know the truth.

Friday, November 3, 2017

One Hundred and Fifty

Everyone wants to live, and everyone wants to die.  This is a paradox to those who imagine they must want one or the other, but not both.  It’s always both.

Everyone wants a good death, one that completes a good life.  But most people live meaningless lives that aren’t completed, but merely ended, by equally meaningless deaths.    

Everyone wants to live not because their lives are good, but because they’re meaningless.  They know life is change, so they hope their lives will change for the better.  But as they grow old, they lose hope.

Some then kill themselves, but most don’t.  They choose not to kill themselveswhich is not the same as choosing to livebecause they no longer care whether they live or die.  

Wednesday, November 1, 2017

One Hundred and Forty Nine

I seldom remember my dreams now.  I know they’re not good only because I always wake feeling depressed.  This morning I remembered why.

Last night I dreamed I was back in school.  It was graduation day, and all the other students were celebrating. 

Everyone was dancing except me.  I made my way between the dancers, walking slowly towards the door of the principal’s office.  I had a question to ask her, but I was sure I already knew the answer,

She told me my degree was worthless.  I already knew that, so hearing it confirmed didn’t surprise me.  But it did fill me with pity for my fellow students, who were celebrating because they didn’t yet know what I had always known.

The immediate cause of this dream was a television documentary I watched last night about the privatization of the public schools. 

It featured a waitress who said she’d paid her way through a privatized school by waiting tables, only to learn on graduation day that the school wasn’t accredited, so her degree was worthless.  I remembered wondering how she could not have known this.  Didn’t she investigate the school before applying?       

Then I remembered thinking it didn't matter because all schools are worthless. 

I attended what was considered a good school (although the teachers complained to me that it wasn’t what it used to be; the destruction of the schools - of everything we used to call civilisation - has been going on for a long time), but no school prepares us for life; not the life I should have lived, the life we all should live. 

Teachers prepare us to live in this society by telling us to forget what every child knows, and believe - or rather suspend our disbelief - in our society's myths. They do this not out of malice or jealousy, because they want us to fail as they did, but because they know living in this society without the illusion of hope is unbearable.