The drag of life.

As I’m writing this, it’s raining outside and I’m sitting alone at my desk on a Friday night. Life hasn’t been easy lately. I think that most of us can attest to that. It’s been a while since I’ve felt truly alive. I remember the days before COVID-19, adulthood, and hell, even before social media became a thing. A typical Friday night back then would be biking to my best friend’s house, playing Call of Duty all night and stuffing ourselves with fried foods. Man, those were the times. Not a care in the world and all that bullshit. The thing is, times change. People change. Your level of happiness is not what it was when you were young. Neither are your standards of living and what it takes for you to be happy. A couple of years ago, I’d reach the feeling of happiness after a couple of beers and my dearest friends surrounding me. As I grew older, my emotions grew more complicated. Nowadays after a couple of beers and my friends surrounding me, I feel guilty. For having drank alcohol, for not seeing my friends more often and for not having done as much as I could have the week prior to those beers. It seems that being happy gets harder the older you get. That if you don’t keep up with enriching your life, you’ll fall behind and end up a failure. Not in anyone else’s eyes, just your own. So while you keep reaching for that ever-exonerating happiness, the goal of your life, the end all be all solution to the fear of death, you forget about actually enjoying what you have. It’s a natural thing, we are hard-wired to be wanting more than we already have. A principle that capitalism thrives on. The need to have more than you already have. And it’s an ugly one. It makes you work harder than your body and mind can take, pushing you over the threshold of what you thought was possible year after year. And when you reach your goals, what’s the first thing you do? I bet the first thought you have is: “Okay, what’s next”. If it’s not, I’m happy for you. If it is, you’re exactly like me. Somehow, I’ve never been able to just be content with whatever I’ve accomplished. A big part of that is because I know that other people have accomplished more than I have. At the age of 22, Jennifer Lawrence won her first Oscar. Steve Jobs at the age of 25 was a multi-millionaire. I neither have an Oscar or more than 2000 euros in my bank account. Thinking about that makes me feel terribly inadequate and even though I know better than to compare my life to that of others, it affects me. I think that many people feel the same way when they hear one of their childhood friends has just bought their first house or has started their own business. It’s something that you constantly get confronted with and even though you tell yourself that you wouldn’t want that or that’s not how you see your life, subconsciously it tends to sting a little bit. This drives us to do better, do more every day, and wear ourselves down. I wish that we could just collectively say “fuck that shit”. However, we are confined to the minds we have. We can do a little to alter our perception and steer our thoughts but in the end we are all human. We are all confined to the same principles that make up the human thought processes. That’s also the reason why we (sometimes) can get along really well. Because we can relate to each other. We recognize our owns thoughts and experiences in those we share our minds with. It’s when our minds don’t align where it get’s hairy. When someone doesn’t understand the thoughts and experiences of someone who is for example homosexual, a rift forms. This misunderstanding often outs itself in a certain type of fear that makes a person disapprove of someone else’s identity. In all likelihood, the people you run into haven’t had the same experiences as you’ve had. They don’t feel the same way about things and often think their opinion is superior. It’s hard to blame them, they don’t have anything else to go off but their own experiences. They’re just the same as you. Just the same as me. The same as we long for connections with other people, we long for our thoughts and ideas to cohere. As humans we try to fit all the pieces together in our minds to form an identity and life we are content with. However, sometimes the pieces just don’t fit. This, for me, makes life a drag.