I’m a baby…
I cry, I smile, I stifle a sob, I regurgitate most of what I’ve eaten. I sit around on the floor a bit, tap the floor with my hands, cry more and laugh again, pointing my hands at nothing in particular. I go through many different emotions in that one minute. I take a book, place it on the floor, trace the images and words on it with my index finger, ‘why isn’t nothing springing to life?’, I ask myself as I look at it with sad leaky eyes. ‘It’s a book’, I’m told.
I’m bored soon enough — I look for another distraction.
I’m taken out, I’m made to hold conversations, look at other people and put up with their quirks and idiosyncrasies. Sometimes I laugh, but most times I’m bored and my nose crinkles up like there’s no escape.
I’m disgusted.
I look for another distraction.
I’m directed to look into the television, a jet black screen that springs into animation but still shows me the faces from the world — different people with similar, or in most cases, the same idiosyncrasies. And then a large digital block of scrolling images, videos, songs, happy stories, woe tales, wonder mothers, happy husbands, poverty, hunger, rape and rage. It turns into something that feeds my distraction-hunger. There’s liberal and conservative, fat and thin, dark and light, free and paid for, smart and dull, good and bad. What’s all this? Opinions? Labels? The rulebook? What is it?
I look for another distraction.
I sit around looking out my larger than life French windows, moping and sulking, for I want more.
That’s when I spot it. My new distraction.
The Lego blocks.
There. Now, I am occupied.
Soon, I will be bored. And I will look for another distraction.
So will you. This is the story of our lives. Each one of us are babies stuck in depressingly convoluted adult bodies with attention spans dwindling by the second. And who are we to blame? That still needs an answer.
