A token of the past
A piece from when I was 17
I was recently just going through my Google Drive, trying to get a handle over all the random documents and spreadsheets I’ve accumulated over the years. I found a lot of old assignments from college and from high school, some poetry pieces, and some embarrassing ramblings. But I also just found something that I have no recollection of writing, but it speaks to me almost exactly a decade later. This short piece was written when I was 17 and was certainly based on my day-to-day then. It really hits at the core of something I’ve been feeling recently. Maybe it will for you too.
March 9th, 2015
She woke up, feeling energized. Her legs were restless as she stretched and let out a correspondingly restless scratchy sound from the middle of her throat, her body tense as she scrunched her legs towards her torso, arched her back, and curled her wrists in to hug her ears. She let it all go with a sigh as she realized she was in a completely different and estranged reality from the one she had just been in. Her attention entered the day where there’d be responsibilities, stress, emotions, and the constant reminder of what she’s supposed to be doing. This state of mind differed dramatically from the intangible void of nothingness in these middle-to-end stages of sleep, a place of comfort to her. Well, it’s not a place. That would require some sort of setting. No, here, there was just being, no faults, no compensations, just the simple existence.
But that’s just not something to be thinking about when she was supposed to be up at least 15 minutes ago. I mean, what would her professor think? “Oh sorry I’m late professor Brian, I just couldn’t will myself out of the feeling that I have absolutely no desire to engage in small, delusional, and ego-proving human activities. All just to go back to the wave of uncertainty every night.” No, it just sounded too aggressive, and a little too much like “I just couldn’t get out of bed”. Might as well get up.
Her mind flutters back and forth between doing what she wants, sometimes nothing at all, and the doubts others would have about such future-jeopardizing tasks.
Everything stopped as she stepped outside of the house to get to the object of transportation; the car. The fog rolled over the dark green hills like poured milk that danced gracefully across the surface. It was early in the morning, and the gray tint of the world illuminated the little glows from far away windows, like candles humbly radiating all around her. It had a calming, comfortable effect on her, something is here that has been for billions of years, and most likely will continue to be here long after she’s gone. Well, there’s a weight off her shoulders. But scientists predict that by the end of this century, climate change will have ravaged the world, taking away her beloved, gentle, fog rolling hills.
Maybe she can become a politician and get more environmental protection laws passed.
It seems the weight has again found its place on her shoulders.
Going to school she sees her peers—some close, others just polite acquaintances. The politeness bothered her sometimes, it was like an apologetic attitude for not taking as much interest or time to get to know each other like she did with some of the others. She realized there was an aspect of this in even some of her close friends.
The truth was she was an observer and a presenter. She liked to watch and be watched, but often didn’t like participating. If she did, it was usually an observation in disguise, like the way anthropologists conduct field study.
She learned in her well-off community college about other cultures, how different they lived. How seemingly simple in many cases. There always seemed to be a common thread in school, Use your knowledge to make the world a better place! “How?”, she wondered. No one ever had a direct answer, but she was supposed to keep staying in school and maybe figure it out.
Clearly I’ve always been an existentialist. Haha. But at least those tendencies were expressed quite beautifully. Oddly, I feel less alone in re-reading these words and grateful for all I’ve been exposed to since then.
I hope whoever is reading this feels some solace in it as I did.
when I first got my hands on "being and nothingness", I was like ohhh. I'm an existentialist. A being-for-others