POV

They say that your point of view depends on where you stand. It's one of those statements which are hard to contradict, and at the same time, there is something sinister about them.

They also say that if a person knew beforehand that they would trip and fall, for sure they would have sat down instead.

Would they, though?

The world seems to be a crazy place governed by some rules that are hard to grasp, and I am not talking about gravity or the laws of physics.

If I had to name one law to rule them all, I would inevitably mention the spiral of absurdity, which is the only instance known to mankind when the purest form of a perpetuum mobile exists. You may not know what I mean when you read my words, but if you think about it, I am sure you will come to the same conclusion. And that is, that with the ever faster pace of our everyday lives, everything that truly matters changes into a blur or smudge similar to the view you can see outside of the car window when the said car is going fast.

And of course, you may say to yourself that it's not that bad since you are the one behind the driving wheel, and I would agree if not for the fact that the driver's point of view is usually the most limited one, always concentrating on things that are just around the corner and often failing to see those that are in front of them but slightly to the left or right.

In this complex world of deadlines and things that should have been done by yesterday, when tomorrow is often more important than now, although instinctively we all know that it may never happen, I find something serene and dreadful in the ever beautiful quote by Theodore Roosevelt:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

Why the dread? Because I find it hard to accept the point of view in which I have to struggle my whole life for nothing more than the doubtful delight of the fight itself.

And yet, it seems that this is precisely how the world is. How we built it to be. How we unconsciously agreed that there is value in the struggle. That, as things are, the struggle is part of life, and it cannot be removed from it.

But this is not the noble struggle Roosevelt spoke about. No, it’s just the struggle of trying to keep afloat. Of not sinking to the bottom of despair. It’s this sluggish feeling of counting every minute to the end of the call, the meeting, the day. Then, count every second to the end of the week. Of reaching the weekend, only to realise that you won’t be able to accomplish anything of what you had planned for yourself. Not because you are weak-minded or not strong-willed enough. Not because you don’t have the spark of creativity in you. No. It’s because you already used up all your mana and HP on trying to get to the weekend. You used your magic on someone else’s endeavours. And now, you are simply tired.

So in a way, it is true that the point of view depends on where you are seated. But it’s not true that if a person knew that they would trip and smash their face into a concrete wall, they would have stopped beforehand and sat down. The world we built for ourselves does not promote sitting down. Nor does it promote stopping before it’s too late. Even if we instinctively know that our situation is hopeless, that the system is rigged, that it makes no sense to waste away our life and potential doing things that amount to nothing at all, we still cannot stop.

Or can we? Perhaps we are in this situation precisely because we accepted the great narration of the ever-present and never-ending progress. The cult of productivity, technology and innovation. This horrible mix of mythology, cult-like devotion and the imperative of forever going forward.

But going forward is not really a direction in nature, is it? In the wild, everything repeats itself, restarts, recycles. Every ending is a beginning of something new, but is it progress? Can it really be called that? Can you say that a fallen tree becoming a shelter for a myriad of insects is progress? Or is it just life?

Even if you believe that progress is a human-exclusive characteristic, I still struggle to feel this forward push as anything else but a fear-based dash straight into a concrete wall.

They say that if you don’t move forward with the times, you will be left behind. But I already know these muddy waters here, this bog of a reality. Why would I want to move forward if there is no rest in sight? Why would anyone want to be more efficient if this efficiency is just for the sake of efficiency?

Maybe I am getting old and thus unable to follow the logic of imagined progress. But when I look at the headlines, I do feel like I was transported into the Middle Ages, but on steroids. Even darker, even fuller of the zealot’s flame that burns anyone who does not subscribe to it.