Nothing Matters and That’s OK

Yael
Yael
Sep 7, 2018 · 4 min read

We should have stopped at sliced bread.

There’s a reason that the phrase exists. We say something is “the best thing since sliced bread”, because nothing has been good since. We realized we could create something better than what we had, and we fucked ourselves. Let me explain. Before sliced bread, things were simple. You were born, you did whatever job it was that you fell into, and you died. Maybe you got dysentery. Who knows. The important thing is that you spent your life living. There was no instantaneous response to every inclination. You had patience because you didn’t have a choice. Before we created this insane digital world that continues existing and growing every second of every day, we only had one world to worry about. If we wanted something, we had time to consider if we really needed it in our lives. Maybe we even had to put in some of the effort to create it ourselves. There was no button that delivered every whim directly to our door in two days (free with eligible Prime purchase), not giving us a second to question our urges. Before sliced bread, we felt things because we didn’t have entire industries dedicated to selling things to give us just enough dopamine that we don’t blow our brains out.

That is not our world. Our world is one dedicated to growth and advancement so intense that within a single generation, eras of technology come and go. Parents ask their kids for help navigating new devices because they are moving so quickly and evolving so rapidly that it is nearly impossible to keep up. Industries are so focused on innovation that by the time their new employees graduate college and begin their career, their education is outdated. Bosses email at midnight making sure deadlines are met. Parents work late into the night, forgetting to watch their children grow up. Twenty-somethings miss the remainder of their youth because they were just too exhausted to do anything at all after spending every ounce of energy trying to “make it” in this world. We need to be bigger, better, newer, faster- why? So we can get more done in our short stint here on Earth? We are so protective of our time, how much one single hour is worth in US dollars, that we forget how much an hour of our time is worth to us as human beings. An hour spent with the people we love, spent doing something that makes us feel refreshed or personally fulfilled; we’re told it’s at worst a waste, or at best a luxury.

It’s almost laughable that we still pretend to question the meaning of life. As long as we end up richer, more fit, smarter, and hotter than the guy next to us, who cares, right? The meaning of life as we know it now is inadequacy. We will never be thin enough, we will never be successful enough, we will never be loved enough in our own eyes. Everything that motivates us is driven by an intense discomfort with who we are, the fear that we are not good enough. It’s sold to us through products that promise to fix the problems we didn’t know we had, it’s shoved down our throats by social media surrounding us with the embellished, filtered lives of the people who seem to have it all figured out.

We are all so sad, though. It would be absolutely insane if we weren’t. This world could not exist as we know it if it was filled with happy people. Happy people do not work until 11 PM and then go back to work at 6 AM to do it all over again. Happy people don’t wait hours in line to spend a ridiculous amount of money on a new phone when theirs works just fine. Happy people don’t blindly do what they’re told, hoping that they’ve finally found something to make them feel anything at all. They don’t hide behind screens, unleashing a hurricane of rage at anyone who doesn’t fit into their narrow view of the world. The world we live in is not designed for happiness, it relies on misery to drive labor and sales and obedience. The world is a machine and our pain is its fuel.

Things are not going to change, at least not any time soon. You will constantly be falling behind. You will never be good enough in your own eyes. The people around you will inexplicably always seem to be doing exponentially better than you, seemingly without effort. Use that. The next time you get an email from your boss at 8 PM with yet another request, mark it as unread and go spent time with your family. When you’re exhausted and overwhelmed, take a day off. If you’re afraid to take a risk because you might fail, do it anyway. Feeling shitty about your body after seeing your friend’s beach pics? Treat yourself to lunch. You might not be employee of the month, you probably won’t get that promotion. You’re never going to look like a Victoria’s Secret model, and honestly you probably will fuck up that date you stressed so hard about. Take comfort in knowing that perfection isn’t possible, and you will likely be mediocre at best. You could restlessly strive for greatness for the rest of your life, missing life’s greatest moments. Or, you could be mediocre, and spend your time living and experiencing and doing things that make you feel fulfilled.

We’re all going to die, but not all of us will live.

Yael

Written by

Yael

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