Illusion of a Path

The road leads nowhere for there is no road. There is merely a planet full of forms, all full of life, and of these - bajillion known - forms, just one dominates this rock like a paid madam. What have we become? Sure there were more pronounced moments that led us so astray, but what of the daily twists and turns that bring us deeper into the darkness: the ones we seem so happy to ignore?

Let’s begin by acknowledging that the idea that having children and a house is the only thing that will fill your life with joy cannot be the way a moment longer. This perfect scenario is deeply embedded in us, but it shouldn’t be sold as the way, just one of many. As women edge closer to full-blown freedom from the world of old white men, and as the sparkling queer community, and wondrous people of colour, and people that don’t fit in boxes, too, step closer towards truly escaping the weight of the generations before them that pinioned everything on keeping them down, we must pause and realise progression is an illusion in this world. It’s theatre most of the time. A pantomime. We must do more. We must be more if we are to free everyone from this world our forbears made.

Society is a rock on the chest on us all: it weighs heavy: as do the mistakes of, and the damage caused by, people who quite literally died, had their time, and no longer exist. So how can these criminals with cash who’ve been and gone, and lived their lives, negate ours while we’re alive in the here and now?

Humans can be cruel, we don’t understand our history, or our origins, and we so often act more like animals than the animals we keep and see before us do. Yet we possess an undeniable intelligence, and a consciousness that moves faster than the speed of light, so how is it that possible that the wool can be pulled with such ease over our eyes? That we can behave the way we appear to today?

Something isn’t right about this planet and we can all feel it. It’s in the air. It’s in your mind. You know it feels different to before but cannot say why. Alarm bells. As though a storm brews. The people out there doing their part to change society deserve praise, no doubt, but it’s not enough. It’s well meaning but ineffective, and nothing will ever be any different. It’s ludicrous to think a few plaques and an angry march down a busy street is enough to enlighten anyone or exact any graspable change. Me must all, each and every minute of every day, do more and say less.

We are lost yet so desperately seek what we believe that we need in all the wrong places. And rely on bad advice from days gone-by. The very idea of being on ‘the right path’, the very illusion of a path, and the comparing of ourselves to others, and our elders when they were the same age, is all easily linked to what’s wrong with the masses. We look too deeply and talk too often of the past. We are petty and our memories hold on tight to that which errs us. Our inability to let things go, combined with a fear of the new, holds us back so greatly it cannot be articulated.

We human beings ooze untapped potential. We posses seemingly magical mental abilities, too, that enable us to do so many incredible things. But we never notice. We ignore what we are and take for granted what we can do because we are so busy spending doing a whole load of nothing elsewhere. We fill (and thereby waste) our time staying busy, doing pointless tasks, wasting our energy and our brilliance on all of the wrong things all of the time. A never ending spin in the machine.

We are lost. So few see what need be seen, and when they finally do find the light switch it’s always too late. An organism (us) has conquered a planet (earth) and has now begun destroying it both systematically, and at whim.

It’s sad, because it is a tale with an ending that we will never know - we are merely a section that changes the structure of the story to come. Vastly, it seems.

If we forgo the illusion of democracy, the notion of politics being fair, and give up on that dying, archaic ideology, and set our minds on the stars: on exploration: on adventure: on discovering *who* we are and what we are supposed to be doing while hurtling through space aboard this rock (of which we are the crew not the passengers) then imagine where we could go? What we may learn along the way?

Purpose is not to be found in menial work, or in struggling to live a certain way, nor is it found in prayer, nor in the worship of imaginary figures handed down to us our from our lost, lonely and scared ancestors. They needed to invent these things to have purpose and meaning and to feel that there was a reason to live: but most importantly to feel that *someone* was in control. It’s amazing and a testament to our story telling ability - but it needs to go. If the money spent on the religion had been spent on space you might have been reading this on the moon.

If there is a right path we are not on it. Some days it feels as though we are in the failing version of an experiment that somewhere, elsewhere, went very, very well.

And in that experiment, who knows, there may have been no borders, no nations, no division, just the genius of man working together to wondrous things with their mighty brains amongst the stars. Sure there’s be crime, maybe a spot of murder, but nothing like what we are here. We’d be a super species; speedier, brighter, and less inclined to self obsession and greed. Vulcan almost.

Now, letting go of what others think, just for a minute: do you agree?

To conclude is to end with a takeaway:

Is there more that you could do? Are you living up to your potential? Are you kind? Are you honest? Have you weighed so heavy on another you let them break? Have you hurt anyone or been hurt so badly it changed your essence?

Do you think it your destiny to have a powerful and complex machine in your head - capable of doing just about anything - just to end up doing the same shit as everyone else that lived before you?