When I come across people passing by me in a crowded space while I just sit there in the middle of it all, like an invisible presence, I can’t help but notice the ironical lives we are all living today.
The modern lifestyle of any average human being is such a contrast to the life even a mere century ago, that it makes you think how we managed to land ourselves in our current precarious system. How can it be that we managed to progress so much, and yet took several steps backwards?
How can it be that we are the most comfortable generation ever and yet are also the most miserable? Keep in mind that I am talking about the world as a whole, so if you belong from a nation where most are happy, I implore you to take a more broader view of the world.
Our lives are filled with such countless ironies and the discussion could last for days. I would like to talk about two of these however, that have been troubling me the most recently.
The Rat Race
Sometimes, it feels to me like we are not human beings, but rats. Fortunately some other people have thought the same for quite a while now, so I can safely presume that I am not losing it.
If you look up the term “rat race”, you will find that it is defined as ‘an endless, self-defeating or pointless pursuit.” Doesn’t that sound exactly like the lives most people are living? Take a look at how we start our mornings, the same repetitive things we do throughout the day and how we go to bed feeling utterly beaten, over and over again.
That’s not the sad part though. Not by a mile. The real irony is that we do all of that in the hopes that in a future not too far away, we won’t have to do it anymore. That there will come a time, when we will be able to escape the rat race after we’ve met our goals or have attained financial freedom.
And you know what? That future never comes. At least not for the major part of the population. The maze that we get ourselves into is so complex, that getting out becomes almost impossible. And the sad part is that getting into the maze has become the only way of life.
The Irony of Superficial Lives
Popular Hollywood actor Will Smith once said, “We spend money that we do not have, on things we do not need, to impress people who do not care.” Isn’t that agonisingly true for a large number of people today?
Not only are we constantly in a rat race, we are also living highly superficial lives where we do things to have a sort of higher status than the next human being which doesn’t have any real value at all.
So, you go through all that trouble, and in the end, it is meaningless. Not only is it meaningless, it also makes you jump through hoops that makes your life even more miserable because you have to earn that much more. As if earning a living wasn’t hard enough.
Sometimes I wonder if we are a truly intelligent species or just a quasi-intelligent species. Our ways of life today certainly makes it seem that it’s the later.