Squandered Relentlessness

An essay by Rommel M. Martinez (2012-03-07)
Original Link http://rmm.meta.ph/essays/squandered.html

There is a disturbing, and eerie sensation that I feel whenever the damping realization that I am no longer a young child, is observed in my consciousness. The uneasy struggle between learning to let go of my portentous past and my capricious future, grips me, with heavy clench. It is not about the inability to redo gratuitous expenditure of somewhat liberally-provided lax confinements of time, but it is about the unsettling observation that the mindset I previously took for granted, is now something that would require me Atlas strength to even begin to summon. I miss the unrelenting inquisitiveness that I once wielded with ease, to my daily scuffling scores with the hordes of raids of life.

When we move past our zones of comfort, we are filled with eagerness to return back to our own fortified bunkers. We see our own phantasmal doppelgangers, communicating and showing to us what impending atrocities may rise out of the ground, ready to devour us alive. The longer we stay outside, the higher the probability of death. We make ourselves believe our own convictions. We justify through our own uncalibrated scales of what choices to make. Whenever unfamiliar territory is explored, we almost instantly coil ourselves, back, into seemingly intractable forms. We do it because of fear. We do it because we do not like the unfamiliar. We do it because of our affinity and devotion to safety.

We complain of the stifling absence of bounty, and yet we voluntarily stop ourselves from making even an inch of movement of a limb towards making the advancement on a prey. We are so romantically in love, with fervor, on the seeking of rationale to our unjustifiable excuses, but we equally seek sound reason. It is even more appalling to see that some of us insidiously advertise illusions of grandeur, with claims of full reprising sensations of the bounty's meat. Our personal biases towards reaching the reward, effectively stops us from actually reaching it. We succumb to the remorseless claims of others, on their failure, effectively rendering us ignorant of the unseen reality. When the number of persons that flock around us, is high enough, according to our personal metrics, we ignorantly instill to ourselves what they buzz to us, and then we impair ourselves and subsequently kill the essence of our individuality.

As adults, we are taught to restrain ourselves inside cages that we ourselves have built. It is unnerving to see this monstrous act unfold before my short field of view, everyday. We drag ourselves towards solitary confinements of our own barbed rooms. We make ourselves fond of preaching doubt to our fellowmen. And if our own kind does the same, we see feelings of accomplishment. That is not only horrendous, but also unsurprisingly stupid. When we were still young, we reach out to empty space, and create our own discoveries. We find out about things previously untaught to us. We have the willful disregard for danger and authority. We do not care how about the scratches and bruises that we get, as long as we satisfy our wild and insatiable taste for discovery. When fueled by curiosity, we discover yet another realm of possibilities -- we find ourselves immersed in dimensions never before heard or seen, and no matter how much dirt and mud we lather up to our bodies, we did not care. All that mattered to us was to have fun in walking the unending journey of discovery. And yet, we learned.

It is ironic that just when we think we are already old enough to venture the world unaided by our training wheels, we smother ourselves with mediocre goals of pseudo-discovery. When the curtain is unveiled, we are confronted by an unsettling sight -- we have lost the drive that once propelled us to have insights. We grew afraid to exercise the same techniques and principles we had once as children. We stopped ourselves from making curious inquisitions about what's out there. We have made ourselves feel comfortable with what is served on the institutionalized plates, without the slightest attempt to bolster up to devise questions. The society, which we are all part of, is part of the disease. This very illness is what we have been aiding to develop, from its inception. This unit is what we have been working hard on, to form our own senses of individuality. We wanted to stand out, and yet all we do is just blend in. How can a formidable hunter become so docile that he becomes the prey himself? Why do we throw away our spears when they are all we have to give us the ability to fight back? Our sensibilities have drifted away into black, bottomless pits, which we have all contributed to making.

It is aggreging to our shoulders, to see that generations after generations, we squander and believe that discoveries should always be made for us, peeled off then fed to our mouths. What have we become as sailors of the stars? Have we given up the drive to motivate ourselves to see what is on the other side of the rainbow? Have we tame ourselves too much, that we became willing to be incarcerated in zoos, for the pleasure of others? Or did we just flush out our sense of power, to make ourselves stand out less, and mix more with the crowd, greatly reducing our distinctiveness when viewed from afar? It seems that, for now, we refuse to answer some questions, yet we retaliate to the idea that we are being interrogated of things deemed to be simpler than high school classroom lessons. But some things are common to us, albeit not all: we are afraid to see how society may react to our actions, no matter how silly or grave our actions may be. But on matters of more weight, we readily blend in, because we do not want rejection. Most of us are more than happy to think and move with the herd, without any forethought.

When we voluntarily attach to our legs, heavy chains and balls of steel, we should not expect to be able to run around the colosseum with ease. When we dare to explore uncharted territories, without regrets, without dis-enchantments, without the necessity to have another ship propel us forward, we have triumphed.