About Being Alive

The World Health Organization in 2019 concluded that Japan has the longest life expectancy of the modern world, at around 74.1 years old. That is about 650,000 hours of meaningful time which could be spent on any desire one chooses. Yet homo sapiens such as ourselves put an invisible barrier between desires and realities based on society’s expectation. This behavior of social expectation are further explained by our desire to survive, which can be illustrated by our reliance towards social interaction. Based on “Social Isolation and Mortality in US Black and White Men and Women”, there’s a direct correlation between social isolation with the risk of Cardiovascular Disease (CVD). This means our actual physical well being are dictated by how much we interact with other people.

To interact means to appease, and to appease is to follow patterns, which ultimately cause us to blend in with the crowds. To be accepted is to be the same. We put efforts into these expectation because it’s important for us to be on the “right track”.

The aforementioned patterns are subjective, it’s natural for us to instead cherry pick and focus on a set of rules instead of following an ever infinite possibilities of human situations. Let’s based it on the author’s values, upbringing, and social environment. One could illustrate these rules/expectations with a set of questions.

1. Did you graduate from a good school?
2. What kind of club/social circles were you on?
3. Were you a leader, a follower, or an apathetic?
4. How much money are you planning to make?
5. Are you an entrepreneur, an employee, or unemployed?
6. When will you get married, and how large a family can you handle?
7. Do you support childless marriage, or are you going with the classic?

These are all “loaded questions”, questions where people would rather point a loaded shotgun into their mouth rather than answer any of these questions. You either lie and kept it up, tell the truth and be ashamed, or explain for an hour about the bad cards you were dealt with. They are the perfect questions, because it will only discriminate those who can’t answer it. If you can’t answer it, are you truly living “the good life”?

You started to doubt your approach in life. The flawed methodology you stole from someone to reach the same success and it fails. The kind gestures you showed to the world, replied with a whimper of good will that doesn’t change the course of your life. The world is indifferent to your advances, no matter how much positive impact you’ve done to society. It is your fault to expect any difference in your life, by putting hopes on others.

Intrusive thoughts such as throwing yourself off of a high place are commonplace. Suicidal thoughts for the hell of it. They are thoughts of self-deprecation, self-loathing, and maybe even self-harming. The astute among you might notice the difference between intrusive thoughts and suicidal tendencies. One can be done multiple times, while the other are unlikely to be repeatable.

Death, however the circumstances might be, will reveal or at least hint at the true nature of a person. To illustrate, let’s just say you are a working-class man in his thirties. After a grueling ten years of work, certifications, and difficult projects, you naturally expected a promotion. Your boss did promise a “fast-track” to glory all those years ago. But life had another plan, a new manager from another company “stole” your desired position and took the lead. Now you must decide on what to do next.

There are infinite amount of possibilities, but we are going to cut it down to two. Let’s call the first one APPROACH A. With this approach you are letting your feelings get the better of you. No friends, no family, not even the help from a professional like a psychologist. Your brain starts to churn information, it feels like the most logical step forward is to give up. You are then given some options from the internet on how to end your life, and after some contemplation, you did it. Now you are dead. Your life is now worth a single failed promotion.

Upsetting isn’t it? To have your life be reduced to a single failure. But that’s just the reality for most of us. We are dictated either by our successes, failures, or both. As an engineer, you will be remembered by the projects you have started. Some you will finish, most are taken to the side and be forgotten. As a parent your child will see you as a god at first, but then reminisce about that one time you are playing games with them. As a politician your actions, stances, and speech will be recorded and remembered, or taken to archive after your issue have gone stale.

You might think about the worth YOUR put on YOURSELF. After all, there’s no good reason to care about what other people are thinking. Being a lone wolf, carving path of your own, is what the cool kids are doing. But with this approach you are still dead. Dead man tell no tales, so your worth can only be dictated by those around you, while you’re dead.

But maybe APPROACH B is more practical if you’re planning to live as long as possible. Maybe our perception of life are screwed by the misery of others. Your life isn’t as bad as those who live without their full limbs. You life isn’t as bad as those who fight against tyranny (at least openly).

The value of life is different when you look at your life differently. Consider of how a Muslim see the life of a person. Islam teaches to look at life as a part of a bigger journey, not the whole.

NOTE: I left this page unfinished. I honestly do not understand this article that much. Seriously, I made it, and somehow I forgot how to finish it. Though this is my last note for it.

TODO: maybe it’s about our perception of the world that is wrong, maybe failure is OK and our worth is placed on how good we are at standing back up, not how many times we fall down