Existential Dread and How Guilt Crawls Inside Your Body
I feel the burden of existence on my mortal body. All these faces, even my own is a stranger to me. I would very much like to be liberated from this state and go back to where I came from. For I cannot possess the feelings of belongingness here. But there’s a fear of unknown, how things shall take turns. Would I wake up from a nightmare or a beautiful dream? What If I wasn’t born? Wouldn’t it be more suitable to not have any thought at all? Why do I have to share this burden of existence with other fellow being? Yes, we get happiness in this lifetime but what about the timeless suffering and despair. Why do I have to tire myself from thinking or even writing this? Existence itself is exhausting.
I envy those people who say they don’t have regrets pilling up their thoughts and really mean it. Regret doesn’t necessarily has to be associated with actions but words too. Don’t you regret those moments where you weren’t enough? From my perspective, people don’t really regret doing something as they settle for it but what eats them up is what what they could’ve been or could’ve said. The phrase ‘’ I should’ve ‘’ engulfs their lives like a fungus attached to a surface growing bigger with each supply of oxygen as that person grows older. Some people settle themselves with the thoughts that those events are in the past but the thing they can’t forget is that the regret lives in the present, grows with them and probably dies with them. It’s fortune If a person can bury the self-eating regrets with oneself. Otherwise, they pass on that regret to their people like the spores of that fungus and continue to contaminate which could’ve been free.
How many of us grew up listening to our parents that “You will become Doctor one day.” “CSS officer for sure.” “My son will be the top class engineer.” All of their failed and broken dreams take a shape of regret and they force their children to be what they couldn’t become themselves. They blind themselves willingly to the happiness of their offspring's and think we provide them with food, clothes and shelter so they must obey us. I want to ask such parents that Is this relationship a part of business? Why can’t love be unconditional? They themselves have suffered from this guilt thrown upon them by their ancestors and hence this viscous cycle of impending guilt followed by hatred continues. Here is an extract from my 7 years old diary:
“Why is so important to be something? Why do we have to hustle all our lives for something that is so materialistic and temporary. What is the point of suffocating yourself till the ends? Why not just exist like others and die? there’s no meaning in existence of this world or after that. Everything is just a void coming out of another void and mixing with other voids to form a massive meaningless void.”
Some of us are lucky enough to align our interests with them and become what others want them to be and play a good part in continuing this outrageous cycle. Others who either have no courage or strong dislike fail to be a puppet in the hands of puppet maker. The worst case scenario is for those who fall into hatred for their own existence and develop this dread that gets attached with them like a chewing gum. They are never able to forgive themselves and elevate the burden that societal pressure had thrown upon them. Some people start living the life of forgetfulness. They don’t bother what happens around them.
It’s so much easier to spend the days of your life in oblivion. Once you start to open up to life, the shocking revelation makes you want to tear you skull apart. Every decision of your life becomes life and death situation. When you start living your life instead of merely spending it, you’ll see yourself going out of your way to questioning what your way even is. Once you realize the impact of your words and actions on someone, you reach a state where you don’t want to do anything or relate to anything. You’d wish you were a rock lying somewhere independent of your surroundings.
