Black wall

So there I sat, gazing vapidly at the artificial wall of brick, located conveniently in the middle of a bustling cafe lined with pseudo earthy decor. Flimsy, painted black, its dimples and divots so subtle, only visible if you allowed the necessary focus. Zoom in to witness the designer’s eye for detail. Its tenant, a doe’s head — also artificial — is cool, hard, vacant, tarnished by the dog-eared poster of a personalisable coffee cup stationed right to its left, like one needs another reminder of how anything can be sold if marketed ‘properly’. Who really needs their face on a takeaway coffee mug, anyway? Who needs two? Are we really that self-obsessed with our own image? Self-promotion is the new religion it seems. #Selfies the latest trending ridiculousness. It is the latest necessary evil it seems — “oh how brilliant I am - look at me, look at me, look at fucking me.”

It does not quite inspire, nor does it sit well with me, this lip service.

The rhubarb, rhubarb of the cafe’s patrons reminds that the world keeps spinning, regardless of one’s disillusion of what the world was meant to be. The world does not seem to care it is losing yet another gentle, caring soul, like many thousands of others before it. Their only wish was to make the world a better place, they all had so much to offer, so much potential to unleash. Once eager, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, now carefully protecting their once free-flowing spring of greatness for fear it will be sucked dry, unable to sustain the next 40 years. The owners now jaded by the selfishness and duplicity of humanity. How dark one’s inner world has become from the rude awakening of a naive dream. The pastel hues that grew to neon brights have diminished to confused greys to consolidate into a midnight black. Does it have to be this way?

No. I refuse.

The new year is here, a sign of yet another new beginning.

They say it takes time to adjust to ‘the real world’, so why do we teach children to be so pure in the first place when we know it won’t prepare them for ‘the real world’ 20 years on? And what a despicable phrase — ‘the real world’, when so much of it is built on false pretenses of confidence and distracting charades of showmanship. What’s ‘real’ in that?

We teach children to be pure, to be kind and compassionate, to value character than riches because fundamentally we know, so many of us know, somehow we have fucked it up royally, with concepts of artificial fame and wasted wealth and short-lived popularity. Superficiality is toxic. It breeds insecurity. There’s that question again — what is real?

It is time to change.

It’s time to take off that mask, the mask we put on for fear of judgement and defensiveness, and we especially need to help those who have sewn it onto their flesh. We can unstitch, we can unhinge, and we can be set free.

Because for every hundred shitty things the world throws at you, being authentic will give you TWO hundred things to smile about. For one there’s less bullshit coming from at least one of us in this bullshit driven world.

Be the change you want to see in the world. Don’t buy in to the bullshit.