Rorah
Mooooooo
Where to start. It’s not that I don’t remember being happy, I just don’t remember how it felt or where it came from, or how it went. I so often find myself wishing now that the world would hurry up and end, that the gasping, wheezing economy would just get on with its long-awaited collapse, that the sea would hurry up and rise just enough to swallow up everything lower than Scafell Pike, that western society would bloody well get on with crumbling and falling, so that we could all get on with the very important business of surviving.
Surviving sounds much more interesting than just living in relative comfort, tootling back and forth to a meaningless occupation every weekday, and then every weekend just hoping your apathy and fatigue will go unnoticed at home. And unlike everything else I’ve ever attempted, I think I’d be pretty good at it.
I don’t know what to do here, or what I want. There’s the typical dream of a beautiful country cottage with stained glass and a huge, stone-built fireplace and dark oak beams and an orchard full of trees that explode with pink and white blossom in the summer and bend over with the weight of fruit in the autumn. But what would I do there? I don’t picture it with a man or children, the former being usually nice, sometimes useful but invariably tiresome; the latter just appearing to be more pain, heartache and earache than I could ever cope with; and not even that cute. I imagine I’d waste it, alone, drinking whatever I could manage to brew myself and wishing the world would end so I didn’t have to get up in the morning and deal with the madness, the hypocrisy, the cruelty, the unfathomableness of other human beings.
And so everything I could ever begin to hope or aim for would be wasted. What’s the point of striving and working and sacrificing to live in an idyll, and not have anyone to share it with you, or indeed anyone you would want to share it with you? Just so you can eventually die in it, and have it passed over to some far-flung next of kin you’ve never met?
Of course I know I’m exceptionally lucky. To be born to two caring, devoted, capable and healthy parents in a country with some of the best - if somewhat inefficient - infrastructures for education, policing, transport, and free healthcare – I reckon those are things that most people in this crazy world would chew off their own left leg for. And having an extremely loving (if at times completely hopeless and frustrating) partner is pretty lucky too.
So I should be ashamed for spending a perfectly lovely Friday evening in front of my PC writing this shameless, self-indulgent drivel. I should be ashamed for wishing this world – or at least this era - would end, when on the face of it I seem to have gotten a better deal than many. Than most, in fact. I don’t live in poverty, I don’t have a terminal illness, I don’t have the recent death of a loved one to cope with, I’m not disfigured or crippled, I don’t have to worry about healthcare costs or lack of transport or hunger or rape or genital mutilation or religious oppression or heavily polluted water supplies or governments that torture and murder their own citizens. I’m bloody lucky. But why am I so god damned sad?
Sorry... I just don't get it
Surviving sounds much more interesting than just living in relative comfort, tootling back and forth to a meaningless occupation every weekday, and then every weekend just hoping your apathy and fatigue will go unnoticed at home. And unlike everything else I’ve ever attempted, I think I’d be pretty good at it.
I don’t know what to do here, or what I want. There’s the typical dream of a beautiful country cottage with stained glass and a huge, stone-built fireplace and dark oak beams and an orchard full of trees that explode with pink and white blossom in the summer and bend over with the weight of fruit in the autumn. But what would I do there? I don’t picture it with a man or children, the former being usually nice, sometimes useful but invariably tiresome; the latter just appearing to be more pain, heartache and earache than I could ever cope with; and not even that cute. I imagine I’d waste it, alone, drinking whatever I could manage to brew myself and wishing the world would end so I didn’t have to get up in the morning and deal with the madness, the hypocrisy, the cruelty, the unfathomableness of other human beings.
And so everything I could ever begin to hope or aim for would be wasted. What’s the point of striving and working and sacrificing to live in an idyll, and not have anyone to share it with you, or indeed anyone you would want to share it with you? Just so you can eventually die in it, and have it passed over to some far-flung next of kin you’ve never met?
Of course I know I’m exceptionally lucky. To be born to two caring, devoted, capable and healthy parents in a country with some of the best - if somewhat inefficient - infrastructures for education, policing, transport, and free healthcare – I reckon those are things that most people in this crazy world would chew off their own left leg for. And having an extremely loving (if at times completely hopeless and frustrating) partner is pretty lucky too.
So I should be ashamed for spending a perfectly lovely Friday evening in front of my PC writing this shameless, self-indulgent drivel. I should be ashamed for wishing this world – or at least this era - would end, when on the face of it I seem to have gotten a better deal than many. Than most, in fact. I don’t live in poverty, I don’t have a terminal illness, I don’t have the recent death of a loved one to cope with, I’m not disfigured or crippled, I don’t have to worry about healthcare costs or lack of transport or hunger or rape or genital mutilation or religious oppression or heavily polluted water supplies or governments that torture and murder their own citizens. I’m bloody lucky. But why am I so god damned sad?
Sorry... I just don't get it
