The Distance Between Us Is Growing Apart

M.C. Escher’s Mosiac II

The distance between us is growing apart.

 

That look on your face in the picture that you just posted of yourself on Facebook disgusts me.

I am… not like that.

It’s the look of you admiring yourself, your photogenic self-gluttony, posting pictures of yourself everywhere in your own albums and being the star of your own show. Oh, beautiful you!

Self-conceit makes me sick.

And as I continue to scroll a bit further down my newsfeed, I am occasionally greeted by the sight of a friend still able to arouse my laughter by posting a silly joke. At least we can both appreciate his sense of humor.

 

The distance between us is growing apart.

I keep thinking how ignorance must be bliss because enlightenment has become incredibly lonely, difficult, despairing, and frustrating at seeing how different you are from the others. And even though I know we are the same, something screams:

WE ARE NOT.

I keep thinking how I am not like any of these people. I can see through their disguise, their pleas for recognition, their attempt at connection, and their hope for acknowledgment.

I know I’m not better, or more special, or even enlightened, whatever that means. Are not we all and fail to see with integral sight? It’s when we start feeling separate to our common cause that issues arise and the obvious becomes oblivious to the obsolete.

I see your determination, lacking.

I see your isolation.

I see you striving, about.

I know you are trapped in the smallest room of existence. Closet space is tight and cramped for comfort. Your friends share the same narrow hallways you do. You see each other every day in the back and forth. Passing each other casually, small talk is all you talk. The boredom of our brothers should be more uplifting.

Scrolling these aisles has never been easier. Digital neglect is beginning to feel like an absolute. An anticipation to do something meaningful shakes me from avoidance to involvement. I feel like something is missing by skipping through all these posts, their entire world, and I can see where they are misleading. The majority socially share every nuance of their day hoping for comment, favoritism, or any gesture of recognition verifying their weak attempt to touch base with the human element.

Elemental causes have turned into rudimentary effects. Oh, conditioned beasts!

The most insightful picture I saw today was either a picture of a cat or someone’s pre-workout selfie showing off their brand new neon-colored Nikes. I still wish I had a pair.

The most illuminating notification I received today was, “LOL. This morning I went to pour milk into my bowl of cereal and missed. Now there’s a puddle of milk on my countertop and I have nothing to wipe it up with. FML” The wisdom of the crowd never fails to amuse me.

We put a man on the moon nearly decades ago. This year we’re able to live longer than ever before. Access to the information age rests in the palms of our hands. We have open access to more consolidated knowledge and free education than ever before and still our biggest concern is playing Peggle, decorating our personal public profiles, and trusting others to teach us what they think we should know without ever bothering to ask ourselves why we don’t get a say in our own education.

The distance between us is growing apart. I am not like you in the sense you may think.

You may not even realize that we are different.

I know we are both caught in this web, subtly shaking the lining, and I know: I am stuck.

I am stuck in this strange loop.

Repetition consumes what I am.

Einstein’s theory seems more and more like the Law, especially from the confines of this sticky mass. And while you’re trying to wiggle your way out of the widow’s web making it worse with each shake of your hips, I lay here; still, my best attempt to slip through this gooey mess is dissolution. If I’m lucky, I’ll manage to squeeze through a hole that was missed, or at the very least, I’ll hand myself over to the fanged tooth bully and give this black-bellied bloodsucker a first go at consuming me, relieving me of duty, and at least grant myself freedom from purgatorial fate.

I want to go. I want to leave. I want to escape this venom within me.

 

I want it to submit, so I do.

I quit.

I stop fighting it.

Resistance is nothing when it has nothing to resist.

 

All my shaking makes it worse. Being around you makes it worse.

“Where are the people that will help me?” I wonder.

Beyond the wall of doubt I hear a whisper. “Help you from what?” the voice says as if it knows a better way. My awkward innocence braves the question that seems to have arisen from nowhere, but rather an uncharted, unscathed depth that had been ignored years ago. “From my demons,” I reply. The voice speaks without words but somehow I manage to comprehend the entire reply. “Those demons are for you and you alone to face. No one can help you defeat what’s inside your own head. Only turning and facing the demon, letting it devour you, absorb you, and swallow you whole will the show be finished. Once, it finally swallows its own tail, devouring itself, and drifting into that which cannot be swallowed will the struggle end.

The point is there is none.

The nothingness is real and alive. It’s frightening.

It oscillates between us, in us, and without us. Being evolves from it. Becoming something we will retire in dissolution. There’s no one that will save you save for yourself. I hope this is enough to deter you, convince you, or guide your way.

Enlightenment is not what you think. I recommend you stop striving for it. It is separating us.