T HOUG H T S F ROM T H E C I T Y OF T H E DE A D
N E C R O P O L I S
There is a point in life where we stop from doing whatever we are doing and we reflect on our own life, we wonder if our efforts matter, because we need to know that they do. We wonder if our choices were good, if we are in the right place, if we are doing the right thing. We all have a feeling of isolation and detachment from the world. Self-awareness splits the world in two, me and everybody else, and many times we see that other half as a unified group that collectively seeks our misfortune, that’s just how individually we perceive the world. We crave to be part of something, loneliness is too harsh, we are not designed to be alone, we seek shelter that is usually found on groups that promises us to give us a place, promises us meaning, something to do a feeling of belonging. This is what I would refer as ideal circumstances, because it prompts us to live in an ideal way, do certain things that our group considers right, appropriate, the right thing we were looking for stops being less about us and more about them, individuality finds itself suppressed in exchange of being allowed to be part of that larger group that gave us their approval and made us feel accepted.
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Is understandable most people suppress their inner self in order to live in society, but this backslashes at the individual level and reflecting on life in certain way about certain things means we are not living It People find themselves having crisis at some point in their lives, we lose a sense of meaning, we feel deprived of purpose, it gets hard to describe, is something that has been building up for who knows how much time. We finish high school, then college, then we work, we get the car, the girl (or guy), the dog, the cat, the apartment (or house), we get married, then the better salary, some holidays, we travel to some places, we divorce, we keep on working, we find someone else, we buy this and that and then we die, and at some point, we will be forgotten.
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I hardly remember my great grandparents name, my parents know, once they are gone many names they know will be gone too, unless something huge is done we won’t be remembered for too long. Then there is the pressure to be remarkable to leave a mark, if you have the potential to do so, you will become a workaholic and even your most altruistic actions will be no more than your means to pave the way to the never attainable immortality. If you don’t have the potential to do so, you will become resentful of those who can and you will claim that you purposely chose the easy path while deep inside you regret not trying a little harder, wondering if you would feel more fulfilled and happier in some other timeline where other choices were made. One finds itself lost for how futile his/her efforts are, the other feels crushed by a society that does not cheer for the weak. Both will die.
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No matter how big the accomplishment, in the big scale of the universe our lives are just flashes. A million years from now we might not be here and every piece of legacy will become dust. Maybe something unknown to us now, ceased to exist with no visible trail, we don’t know, we will never know and the same will happen to us, to our lives, to our society to what we call The Human Race. In his poem “In Front of the Mirror”, Vladislav Khodasevich asks: what am I? What’s the point of all this? What happened to my younger happier self? Someone like Albert Camus would have replied: I don’t know, but It doesn’t matter, make things, create. Just live. We constantly shift from one group to another in our quest for meaning, but in the process, we lose our identity, we neglect the problem with distractions that only perpetuate emptiness, we neglect ourselves. But once you stop craving that allusive, weird thing called purpose, when you stop craving that allusive weird thing called “the right thing to do” and you just simply live for the sake of you and only you, you are rebelling to the fate that existence and self-awareness placed you into. You rebel against the curse of relentless challenges that count to nothing at the end, becoming free. Free to explore yourself, the world, to amuse and entertain your own curiosity and pursue what you really desire, no matter how small, no matter how big, no matter how impactful, no matter how unpopular.
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It is then up to the individual to create purpose and meaning by him/her self, to live intensively, to experience as much as possible, because it will fade one day. Without longing for anything celestial or pure, without desiring immortality, is futile, without yearning for anything grandiose we open our eyes to the grandiose of the common and the beauty of the temporary. In the future we are all dead, It is certain. in the future everything has ceased to exist, every single thing. Then this thoughts come from a dead man that lives in a city of dead people, the Necropolis.
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In the future we are all dead, It is certain. In the future everything has ceased to exist, every single thing. Then this thoughts come from a dead man that lives in a city full of dead people, The Necropolis.