Pain-stained Journals | Anthology

8 | Shadowed in the system

Was life meant to be great? Or was it just an illusion of greatness? I have been wondering for the last couple of minutes in my bed. Not much is left for me now. I believe there is only a tiny little amount of time for me to breathe on this Earth.

I don't usually feel other people but now I feel for all of them. They are living in a lie. I close my eyes as soon as new thoughts come into my head. I have never doubted that what I am doing in my life is wrong. Making sure I live up to my unambitious expectation was driving me. Living a life full of stability made me believe everything was alright.

I was wrong, wrong in many ways. Deciding how my life went on, I feel unfulfilled. I was never enough neither was my life. Lifetime brought me many souvenirs. Bunch of them I hid inside my head, some of them in my heart, and on my nightstand. But those were just souvenirs. Were never destined to breathe with me, live with me, stay with me.

Souvenirs are just the objects that are bought. Materialistic enough I bought many of them to feel something. I wasn't living my life to the fullest. Having the same job, going up and up, only to receive a better payment was not fulfilling. However, I didn't know that until now.

I am a successful man in my sixties that got diagnosed with an unbeatable illness that will put me to sleep. A bit of sleep would do me good. I never slept well enough for my age. From school times to present times I slept a little. Sleep was not meant for me, there was so much time to spend available without sleeping. I couldn't break myself to close my eyes until they are just exhausted.

Having so little time on everything apart from work made me have a divorce two times. Work was more important than my wife. Success in work was better than her. I lived by it throughout my entire life. She acknowledged the way I worked but didn't accept that I gave her the smallest amount of my attention. So, we divorced.

Life was not like that before. I remember times before I was thirty when I fully enjoyed my life. I went to dinners, cinemas, museums with my wife and loved every second of it. When I went to this job, my final job, I was amazed. Firstly, I thought that it was a wonderful opportunity for me to work in an environment full of people that want to do the same as me. It's the same thing over and over. We were parts of a living machine. Life is full of machines like that. These machines are producing what we know as the world. I am a small part of the world. Similarities between me and my colleagues are visible. From the way we dress to the way we act. Our plans, our job is constant and dull. We send emails, meet with potential buyers, check emails, listen to dictator boss, all of it looped.

Destined to greatness, was I? I hoped so. Living my passion from an early age I thought it will be my life. My parents decided for me. I studied for a business degree in college. Pleasing my family for as long as I can remember. When I left college, my expectations and there's crashed with each other. It was the end. I wasted the full thirty years of my life to become a cog in a society's machine. Was it easier? Yes. Was it better? No. Expectations of my father are there the whole time. I feel like he watches my every move from his gravestone. He died a couple of years ago. Never seeing again my authority figure was a tough one to crack.

Endless hopes that life will be better. I hope that my life will eventually give out on what I am working on. As I know, I have made mistakes. I feel like a shadow in the system. A system built on lies. It works perfectly because it's a detailed one. When one cog breaks out of the work system, they just replace you. Replacing you is easier these days. Technology will soon be all over us unless it already isn't.

A cog in the system. Sleep, eat, work, repeat. This was my daily life. Nearly no time for myself I decided that working was above anything else. The material success that I aimed for was supposed to give me more stability, however, I never managed to get a hang of it.

Working in a corporation was an experience. I don't say it was a bad one, but it at least was an experience. Experience of a lifetime because I live, and work, nothing in between. This either that I don't like both.

Corporation. It's endless work. You always know what you will do the next day. Some say it is a work of life, but they are just blind enough to not understand the fact that they work for nothing. What was I working for? For a better way of living? Yes. Did I get it or just an illusion of it? Just an illusion.

My passion for art drove deep inside me. When I was little, I painted and drew. Drawing made my life pleasurable because it allowed me to soothe my emotions into one bracket of thoughts & emotions. I lost my passion by the time I turned thirty. Then there was no time to develop it like before.

I should have known that something that comes out of me is much more valuable than anything else.

Laying on my bed I realized that people were wrong. It is not the money. It was never. Likewise, it is all about perception. Of course, money is needed, and I know that better than anyone else. But it is not an epicentre of life. Money is an illness that everyone goes through in their lifetime. The resistance they have towards the illness is different. It varies on them. Some people perceive money as a great evil because "Life is all about money". A coin value was a description of your value. You had that amount of money you are worth. At least that is how many people view it. I view it differently now. Money status doesn't describe who you are. Your self-worth is never supposed to be dependent on whether you have money or not. I saw so many people dressed in cheap clothes, and I used to look at them from the ground up. I perceived people differently by how much money they had. It never came to my conclusion that they might have a different opinion on that.

Here I am, in my expensive mansion living alone, soon to be dead. I didn't complete my life the way I wanted. I know what I should do back then, I should work and work, and I did it by heart. However, I didn't know that the outcome of all of it will leave me with nothing but a brick villa. The earth beneath me is waiting to taste my bones. Death is licking my mind because it becomes distant, shadowed even. Shadowed was my mind that shadowed was a society that had a different opinion on life.

We are born on this earth destined to become who we want. Did I want all my life to run like a horse on an endless work track? I wanted but I never needed to. I wasn't destined to waste my life sitting by the desk all day and doing the same tasks repeatedly.

I thought this is how life worked. Living your life by doing tasks from other people who give an award that is supposed to make up for it. The irony of that is that the people who owe you an award give it in less amount even though you did everything by heart. Everything in life is like that. You give more, you get less. Every chance you get, you become better and better, but it is never enough because you want to go higher. Higher on the endless scale of success. Money success.

How different would it be without money success on a pedestal? Would some people finally view with their eyes how life is like and what it's worth?