It doesn’t matter if you’re a nihilist or solipsist. Whatever.
Heartbreaks are real. It is intrinsic, woven into the human experience. It is that fear of loss. That deep sorrow of losing someone. That sinking feeling, knowing that you’re never going to see that person again. All of us have experienced this well enough. All too common for breakups.
But the worst kind of heartbreak is, of course, when it comes to the death of our loved ones.
I'd never thought it would happen to me this early, but yes, I've lost my best friend. A very dear friend. People don't really change in a vacuum. People are changed by events. And this is one chain of events that changed it all for me.
Maybe by the end of this, you'd discover that we may have more in common than you'd expect.
The year was 2013 when I fell into depression.
How did I fall into such a state of mind? I was on autopilot. A zombie. Sure, I had a pretty decent social life. But I was grinding through the days - stuck daily in congested streets and rigid routines, despite the ever presence of my free will to break free. I was reduced to being merely a passenger, living vicariously through the highlight reels of others in social media. And watch life pass me by.
Remember this: You have free will, no matter what others may tell you.
Perhaps I was on the lowest end of my spirit and morale, suffering from existential fatigue. I am not a morning person. But society wants me to be. I am a misfit. It's like I have some sort of cancer in my brain that I can never get rid off. In all honesty, I've always asked myself - why must it be this way? This arrangement is slavery. I did not sign up for this. And why is nationalism a thing? Everyone around me seems to be okay with it.
I'm a creep.. I don't belong here.
I was a ghost in a multinational megacorporation. Just a figure in some spreadsheet. Performed well enough without inviting trouble, but no one actually knew me well enough. I have zero tolerance for cubicles. And politics is not my thing, especially when it comes to the office. I don't kiss ass.
But I was in sales. A deliberate choice. For the flexibility of time. I get to go out, always. I just couldn't relate much to what I was doing. A sales manager for boring engineering products. What do I sell? Elevators. We'll get you high.
But I can sell. Anyone can. It’s easy.
"You want to buy what I’m selling?"
"No."
"No? Ok then. Call me whenever you need to buy my stuff."
See? It’s the easiest job in the world.
It would also have been futile if I just switch into another random cool or uncool job without truly knowing what I want. I felt like I was destroying 99% of my potential. So I went through sleepless nights exploring, learning stuff, getting to know myself better. I love to learn, but not everything in world churns out value out of every sort of human activity.
I have spent so much time testing out ideas, but never really taking the plunge. Monthly salary is a dangerous, dangerous addiction. Why the fuck are all the things I'm interested.. not money-makers? Maybe my workplace was a giant rehab center, and somebody just forgot to remind me about it.
Be the change that you want to see.
My only problem with that is.. money. I have always been troubled by that concept. At least in its traditional, fiat-form. All my life I’ve seen so many human dramas unfold around me. In-person. On the news.
My dad double-comboed on my mum when he cheated her heart and money to buy a mansion in China for his mistress. And then on the news, we have people dying on the streets while Walmart is filled with food surplus. Plenty of unnecessary human suffering could have been avoided if money is a nothing, thing. Money makes people stupid and crazy. And comfortable.
But what can I do?
Most of us cannot be the change that we want to see..
.. money problems.
At this point, some ideas already started brewing in my mind. Cryptocurrencies for the abundance economy. My best friend jokingly said - "Sounds like high-tech communism". Nobody understood what I was talking about at that time. Only my best friend. But I've procrastinated. Again. My body, rebelling against its own entrapment.
I've procrastinated so much, even to the point that I’ve lost my relationship, right after the passing of my lifelong best friend. We could have all spent so much more meaningful time together. Instead we worked and worked away at the expense of present moments. For a better tomorrow that may never even come? To buy the new iPhone next year? To buy a new car? And then continue working again?
I wish our lives are more inclusive by default. It’s weird that society has self-organized in such a way that does nothing to serve humans at all, only money. It is clearly evident, just look at the great divide when it comes to activities that generate value, and activities that generate.. nothing?
What is the point of making machines, if we do not become less like machines?
"Carpe diem motherf*****"
The problem with the Old World is: there aren't any options to organize ourselves based on human Values. So we just float apart, away from each other, organizing ourselves in countries and corporations that don’t always serve our Values. The software that runs the world is.. broken. It's not a Humanized system. It serves Money alone.
So talk about a double heartbreak. Lost my friend. Lost my love. I felt completely lost. I knew that I was at the lowest point of my life.
Am I doomed to be in this mental state for eternity?
I wanted the Singularity to come. Now. Take me away.
"Carpe diem". My dead friend reminded me.
How can the world be fixed if everyone's always busy trying to pay their bills and buy new iPhones?
No one's at fault. I'm at fault. What am I doing here?
That was in early 2015. I couldn’t feel.
That was time when I slowly transitioned into being a "deafmute".
Adopted a puppy. Brooklyn is his name. He is some curious mix between dwarven Alsation and street mongrel.
We became best friends. We spent so much time with each other. Like a good case of father and son. Sometimes I would just take a rest and admire his dogines, simply appreciating his presence. He’s an anarchy dog. Cageless and triangle-faced. But he’s always around me. Always on the look-out. It’s the guard dog in him. He must always be in the frontline, protecting the most vulnerable side of the territory. His best friend must be kept safe.
So much time spent with each other, and not a word really said to each other. Sometimes I would speak to him and sometimes he would speak to me. Maybe he understands me, but I never understood his cute dog language. We were deaf-mutes to each other. We were in our own minds, projecting, hoping to acquire favourable responses.
It made me think back to my university days. Drowned in books about epistemology and etymology. The tyranny of words. On being pedantic. On being flowery. Political language. Dry-as-paint language. Computing language. Codified language. The fallible human language.
We continue speaking to each other. For years, for decades, without having perfect confirmations on information retention between the human TX and RX. Yet we continue. We are blind, courageous creatures. Always assuming. We are all unknowing deafmutes.
BOOM! Here she comes.
A man stumbles upon a lady in Kuala Lumpur.
An actual deafmute from the land of Chiang Mai.
A very peculiar lady.
A sociable, but severely dysfunctional member of society. Often misunderstood. Doesn't trust men. Cons rich perverts off their money for a living. The real social media expert. She never meets up with any of her victims. She just deletes her account.
She told me she doesn't have a life. She could never relate much to anything.
Only love.
Without a history. From a broken family. A wild child.
We have been communicating for more than a year now. She never asks me for money. Why me? I don't know. Why are we so drawn to each other? While not in-depth type conversations, we could communicate quite effectively. Even lovingly. The trick is not really the choice of words, but our choice of expressions when attempting to communicate.
Our story would be a whole other chapter. But for now we have parted ways, despite being so comfortable with each other. Too much responsibility for me. And it's a difficult situation as well. Dealing with deafness ain't easy. It is sad. I would need to be able to take care of myself first. And my dog. Maybe next time.
I would consider this to be an unknown form of Telepathy.
My experience being submerged in the deafmute world for so long has certainly unearthed some great insights. At least for myself. There's a big one for cryptocurrencies, to be detailed for another time.
Being in constant communication with a (human) deafmute was a really sobering experience. You really wouldn't know what's happening in someone's mind. And everybody is kind of the same, because we're all different in our minds.
Do not assume when a conflict arises. Always try to empathize. When a person is showing that they're distressed, there is a reason why they're opening up to you. All you have to do is ask and engage.
I became a rather different person by the end of 2015. I don't get angry as much anymore. Everyone has their own problems, and there's really no way knowing that they have gone through. Especially when everyone's an unknowing deafmute. The best that I could do is listen, learn, and not just pass any judgments.
And oh, if you could ever explain cryptocurrencies to a deafmute without the use of words, you're game. And I think Steemit is actually pretty easy to explain. The mechanism, however, still remains as difficult as any other cryptocurrencies. Have a crack at this?
---kevinwong--visualcredit:ghostintheshell---
