An Existential Crisis Monologue

 

Not always do you find yourself in a state of questioning the meaning of everything around you. But there you are, every once in a while, finding yourself walking in a tight space between the edges of a double-edged sword, searching for answers that the world deems philosophical. In this dire state, you know that turning either way will be unpleasant. You know well that probing deeper into these questions will intensify the severity of the existential crisis looming around you, but now that these questions have crossed your mind, you cannot ignore them and go back to your life as before, under the pretense of everything making sense.

You always knew that things keep changing and impermanence was a theory, whose every word you thought you knew by heart. And yet you stand in amazement, observing the disquiet surrounding the world and the entropy perched within. Your heart aches when you ponder over the ephemeral nature of human interactions, to think that you meet so many people and leave so many. You wish you could hold people in your life a little longer and make their paths converge with yours again. You see people throwing unsolicited life advice in every conversation and wonder if they ever introspect about their own. You see people succumb to the narratives and conditionings set by the cacophony of people surrounding them and reflect on all the times you have been convinced by the same. You miss a friend you haven't spoken to for a long time and wonder what drifted you both apart. You feel sorry for not being entirely mindful of the life that you have lived so far, for all the times you stayed confined within the walls of your room when you should have chased sunsets.

And yet, two decades have long passed. Were you too naïve to assume that there was a definitive order in the universe to have conceived a thinking, sentient being such as yourself from a mixture of random atoms hurling away from the heart of dying stars? To have nurtured a hope that human beings are humane enough to save them from themselves? And doesn't it infuriate you to know that the planet you call your home is losing the balance to sustain life with every molecule of Carbon that is emitted into the atmosphere? That hypocrisy and doublethink are etched in the very core of power and the supposed flagbearers of global peace and dignity are themselves funding the genocide of innocent lives. To think that so many potentials in your nation are not harnessed because of an inefficient and corrupt system. That humans have created an unrealistic standard to feel relative deprivation against. That the gap between the rich and the poor is turning into an unfathomable abyss, and the inequality in the world is festering like a deadly virus. Is the world turning into an Orwellian dystopia? How you wish you could devise an antidote against the unequal power dynamics that could break this vicious cycle of growing inequality! If only things were that simple!

You have come across many truths in life and realized that knowing can be unsettling sometimes, almost Kafkaesque. But you cannot ignore this state of being. This is life. This is consciousness. This is you. Hold on to this feeling. Just a little longer, before the noise around you consumes you and you return to your clueless mundane engagements of life again.