THE INTROSPECTION CHRONICLES 9 | WHAT RIDES ON THE WINDS OF TOMORROW?

I read a post by @whatamidoing earlier today and though i commented on the post, it sort of made me think about so many things. It made me think mostly about happiness and the pursuit of happiness. It would seem as if each and every day we wake up with one purpose or the other, with one agenda or the other. I often wonder when I wander among people from time to time if they are happy. I wonder if with all the achievements, they may have stashed in their kitty, they have peace.

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_{Pixabay: Kellepics}

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Once upon a time, when a friend was celebrating his or her birthday, I would wish them long life and prosperity but one day I stopped. I sat down and asked myself what is long life and prosperity without peace and happiness? There are men and women with all the wealth in the world who cannot sleep at night. They do not know what it means to be happy or be at peace but they are rich and have access to the best life that money can buy. Now, when any of my friends is celebrating his or her birthday, I wish them to have peace and happiness for as long as they may have to live. At the end of the day, it is not how long you lived that matter, it is how well you lived that matters.

In a generation where happiness has been replaced with pleasure and people seek pleasure with everything they got in them, it is not surprising that we find dissatisfaction in our marriages, in our jobs, in life. We go about seeking for anything that would take us back to that feeling of euphoria. It could be sex or new shoes. It could be heroin or coca cola and hamburgers. These things make us smile, they make us get an inkling of what happiness can be but like any substitute, it cannot be the same as the real thing. The moment, you are done taking that shot of vodka, and the high has passed, you are back to as dreary and depressed as you were before you started imbibing alcohol.

Happiness has gone from our lives and very few of us would know it if it knocks on our door and asks us to let it in. Some of us have travelled to distant lands in a bid to find answers to life’s questions and some of us have locked ourselves within us in order to find the same answers within us. While we seek transcendence and try to be like the almighty, our kids cannot differentiate between love and lust. We cannot give without expecting something in return. People are dying over issues that make no sense. Our homes, our cities are broken and rats run between our legs when we walk along the street.

What is left of us then? For those who have been given the power to steer us to greater heights; whether minsters or senators, governors or presidents, pastors or imams, they seem not to know what it is they are doing. They do not seem to know how to offer happiness to the masses. Maybe it is because they too do not know what it is, what it means and what it feels like. If there is an utopia somewhere in the making, in the future, I hope it is true but I doubt it sincerely. I believe that we as a species are planting the seeds of our own annihilation.

If you are a fan of fantasy novels, you will find a certain theme that runs through most of any series. It is like a certain agreement among all fantasy authors that their books must have that element. I speak of a grand catastrophe often unexplained or unclear that occurs before the story takes off. From Tolkien to Sanderson, from Jordan to Erickson, their stories are filled with myths and legends of a distant disaster that occurred before the start of the present age as recounted in their fiction. What does this say about this race that we are a part of? There is a possibility that in the future man will face something that would toss us off our bearings and we will be the architect of this thing, this disaster. Maybe after such an event, there will be opportunity for us to once again find the seeds of happiness untainted by selfishness, pleasure, greed and emptiness.

Again I am a pessimist by nature and a melancholic too so my words might not be what you want to hear or read but I write from what I see. I have tried to find beauty in this place but it gets harder and harder. People would say why not look on the bright side. Well I would if I can find it but I can’t. May be it is how I am made. Maybe I lack the ability to make light of sadness and depression, of pain and emptiness. May be I can’t see the joke in all of this and as a result I can’t laugh about it or maybe I simply enjoy been miserable. I hear that’s a thing. Who knows what all of these things mean? I like to hope and believe like you do that this world would grow to become a better place but I see skyscrapers hiding broken kids, I see gleaming hospitals hiding wounded spirits, I see wealthy bank accounts shrouding empty souls. This is just me though. Maybe you see the truth and what I see is the deception bred of my inability to accept that there is happiness here.

I am scared of bringing a child to this world, of making a child face all of these disparate shapes and sounds that seem to make us whole. I am afraid of what she or he would become and what my role would be in shaping her or him into the thing he or she becomes. This is not an ordinary fear but it arises from what the world offers as food to the young, what they offer as entertainment, what they offer as education. These things have warped me as much as the next person in ways that we cannot even decipher. Allowing an innocent soul to fall into this scares the hell out of me (the heaven as a friend would say). I really pray that this world is growing better. I really wish it were so and that i am wrong,God knows i want to be wrong pretty bad but i can't even keep my fingers crossed. Good night.

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warpedpoetic, 2019.