Every person defines life differently. So do I. I never expected that other people would ever have a glimpse of my life; even if they could, they would not even understand why I do what I do. Some say life is a series of adventures, silently waiting for one to explore and live through. By that premise, one could expect that one has total control of their life, everlastingly molding and perfecting life according to their ideals. Until this point, I am starting to wonder whether I have that kind of privilege to maneuver life however I can. It takes little effort to see through the delusion saying that life is totally under our control; as we can see, since birth, we have been living our life dictated by society, and of course, our human nature demands us to be the antagonist of our fate, we resist the idea that our life is not life at all, so we tend to delude ourselves into believing that everything in our life is the outcome of our choice, unforced by society and unaffected by the universal laws.
Rather than live life as it is, we live life to the extent that pretense and self-deceit are the standards of our life. It seems that the more we pretend as someone other than ourselves, the more applause and admiration we will gain. Without a doubt, no one has a slight interest in us that is stripped of disguise, and no one is tempted to explore the ordinary “us” who is inherently insecure. We are the best stage actors; we always cry and feel inferior backstage, but the front crowd demands that we never let go of our unconvincing confidence and a sense of success that we never wanted in the first place, however reluctant, we still go on with the play with a smile on our face.
We are too weak to face the world nakedly; we even pretend to be someone who has life all figured out by boasting about everything that makes us look prosperous and peaceful; on the contrary, everything that would potentially make us look unworthy of admiration is brushed off and set aside. The subtlety of our pretense is in itself complex and contradictory. Nevertheless, the main goal remains the same: we do not want to walk the earth alone. When society judges material abundance as the sole indicator of success in life, we work our asses out to earn that qualification. Without much introspection, we treat that as the primary goal in life. And when that too has become shallow by definition, we try to be as “deep” as possible to prove that superficiality can no longer represent us. I still do not know why we are obsessed with gaining unnecessary attention; no matter what we do, be it good or bad, the only outcome we desire is that we can be proven worthy of our existence, and without that sense of worthiness, our feet tremble and soften.
The feeling of becoming something else has haunted us from time immemorial; conflicts happen when we crave adoration from others, and unfortunately, that adoration is earned by becoming someone we are not. It is absolutely fine when we are unaware that we are always compromising and shrinking in hopes of gaining a place in society; however, it has gradually become impossible to maintain the balance of that duality when we desire both momentary adoration and permanent peace; that is why we find it usual when people who look outgoing and optimistic on the outside can indulge themselves in the loop of self-loathing and cynicism whenever they are alone.
We think life is full of commitments and achievable stages because someone else has planned it that way. To avoid being forcefully dragged into the world of uncertainty, we convince ourselves that those are the exact things that we should thrive at; and that we should be at school, university, working, marrying, owning a house, and dying with everything but except ourselves. It never occurs to us that our current life is nothing but a series of continuous efforts to be satisfied and unsatisfied, and surprisingly, people succumb to that simple definition of life. When we are flooded with unknown dissatisfaction, we inevitably blame ourselves for not working hard enough; and when we are inundated with occasional fleeting pleasures, we convince ourselves to have more than we are having. We never seem to feel tired of putting on various masks for different stages of life, and maybe, underneath all the pretense and covers, it is something that has already died and withered. When death arrives, the dead somehow does not know who he/she is. And I think, this is how most lives will be.