The principal problem with our global society is that there is no single leader. There is no captain of the proverbial ship of Earth. We have many captains and they are leading us to despair on the shoals of the immutable laws of nature. The age of the nation state no longer works.
Be your own man.
Live your own life.
Keep your friends close.
Win your own fights.
Social Media is mostly a poison and an addictive one at that. Deleted my twitter account today, and I am not looking back. It was a time suck and filled with a lot of self-important people looking for the next “shocking” or shallowly brilliant thing to say. Twitter is the very definition of screaming into the abyss.
Being stuck in an apartment in NYC during this pandemic is more difficult than I thought it would be. It has been 60 plus days, and I have only left the apartment three times. Each time leaving the apartment felt like a life or death mission. Walking down the street with double bandanas covering my mouth and nose, I would mentally calculate the distance between me and any fellow New Yorkers who happened to be within a one block radius. A simple walk to the hardware store was now a walk through a mine field. Crossing the street to avoid coming to close to people, scolding non-mask wearers and corner loiterers under my breath. It is all so absurd. A trip to the hardware store or to pick up take-out should not entail life threatening risks.
The inability to run simple errands and the constant stress of the pandemic, takes a mental toll. Quarantine is a grind that slowly chips away at the normalcy of life. It is tortuous.
The first few weeks it was fine. Sort of surreal, but fine. But now sitting at home is just depressing. It saps your motivation. You can feel your body weakening from lack of movement and exercise. Your mind dulls. Simply things like getting groceries, become complex tasks. Cooking starts out being fun and devolves into a chore. The days bleed into one another.
I used to take umbrage at people walking around outside seemingly oblivious of the risk of COVID. But now I understand and bear them no ill will. You can’t quarantine forever. During quarantine your apartment might be a prison of your own making, but it is still a prison. It just takes awhile for you to realize it and feel the mental weight of it.
Reality is such a fucked up thing. It is hard enough trying to parse one’s own thoughts and pick a direction (step right, up folks! any direction will do!), but add an unknown period of time to work within and a rulebook you figure out as you go and you have a recipe for frustration or liberation. Maybe you get my drift and maybe you don’t.
Me? I am looking for liberation. I am looking to undo the chains that bind me. Chains that a younger me (also searching for liberation) unwittingly forged for myself. Acting on limited information at the time, I didn’t do too badly. But having a deeper pool of experience and knowledge to draw upon now, I see the chains for what they are. Things that back then I thought would free me have instead bound me. I have looked within and now must forge a new path. The path less traveled and strangely windy.
