I – Adulting
Hi! How are you? How’s life lately?
One night, I was disturbed of that feeling like my soul has been weary ever since I outgrow my teenage era and I am working in a traditional job and spiraled into the adult working era and same old routine everyday – waking up, working for eight hours then going home then sleeping after that. A repeating cycle. An auto pilot.
Suddenly, the overachiever, grade-conscious child became the burnout, dull adult, still figuring out how to live and still searching for the purpose of living in this world. Feeding oneself with ideas of society’s expectations and their own meanings of happiness, that you’d think it’ll burn bright your soul. But you have to trade away the success and the perception of being successful in order to gain peace of mind and appreciate the small moments.
You’d think that consuming tangible and material things can satisfy the hunger and the unhappiness that you’d felt but overconsuming left you being messy. Just a band-aid solution to cure the nothingness.
I’d spent my early adult years with anti-depressant medications and mediocre days, with nothing much happening. Stuck when the world stops and weaving words was my way to cure the disease in my brain. Unsure of where I should be headed. I am an average person who only desires simple living and had this unusual lust of living in the countryside and manifest cottagecore-like living, far from the fast-paced life of the city.
Was it enough to pay the bills on time and do your responsibilities well? Parts of ourselves in our younger era died down. Our views and perspectives in life are changing and transforming but is staying true to yourself hard enough to live in this era of globalization and technology-progressive time?
What’s being an adult? It’s beyond fulfilling your responsibilities and the material things that we need.
Sometimes, it’s about sharing a part of you in the universe – your smiles, your gentle nature, your aspirations, your dreams, your compassion, and love. Above all, to enjoy the smallest moments, the dawdled days, the fun days, the cliches, and the tiniest joys.
II – Mortality
We all die when the time comes. No matter how successful or powerful you are right now, it does not matter even the material things that you gain from this lifetime, you won’t carry that in the afterlife. The afterlife is dark; you have no consciousness, and everything is on pause – unaware of the existence of life and devoid of anything.
Disturbed upon waking up in the middle of the night, I realize that you may feel mediocre and an adult baby, never been wiser and still in that phase of being lost and figuring out things.
We all die. We will disintegrate on the earth. We will go back to where we come from.
You are a part of the universe but do your actions, your decisions and your contributions affect the workings of the universe? To realize that you are just a miniscule speck of dust in the universe also means accepting that we aren’t that special that the universe will stop to conspire for you. It’s to realize that our life is short and we have only a short time to live in our means.
When you are in the middle of an old forest, of trees that existed even before humankind flourished, one of my thoughts will be the realization of being a human that will be gone in this world while these ancient trees remain. We are like candles and as time goes by, the fire will put this out.
III – Realization
I’m still in my adulthood and still learning to be an adult. I am still in that phase where I have figure everything’s out – from the basics to the complexities of life. I am changing. I am not the old me, quite different and quite the same. I don’t know how others perceive me, but I know that I have my own strengths and weaknesses, and my values that I won’t compromise for the notions of the world – to gain something that will just devoid the colors inside of me.
There are dull days, cliché ones and routine-like but these very things keep us alive. That even the tiniest joy lights up our weary soul during the rainy or sunny days of our lives.
That there are things beyond the picture-perfect of others’ lives. That there are things beyond what occupies our mind the most. That there are moments where we can rebuild ourselves. That there are things that make us grateful for everything. This very moment can be life changing.
To realize that even if we are just dust in the universe, we still have a ripple effect to how the world works, amplifying our voice to the very thing that we can change, in order to achieve a harmonious community.
And even if we disintegrate in our lifetime, we somehow live our own life.
Sincerely,
Sailer