Few things are not to be forgotten this year. In this late Wednesday afternoon, in a brief respite I take from work, I have once again shut off the computer and moved away from my office chair. The afternoon in February is not as dark as the one a few months ago in December, birds have started to tweet, and enough flies have reawakened so that a few could slip through the window. Every day I have worked diligently, like any other qualified salaryman of this day and age. Through the unchanging routine of waking up and turning on the computer and a few hours later, turning it off, days' elongation and nights' protraction could almost be perceptibly felt. And in the process very little room has been left for anything else. To a certain extent, the act of leaving room to anything else has begun to feel a little antiquated and ill thought-out. I work, eat takeouts, look at YouTube, the trees, and the stock market, buy various things and erect them in my room, and debate and examine visiting friends or not visiting them with a calculated, financial exactness that has not been present in me previously. As a result, each day becomes easily dissectible, with clear, definable structures and any excess part trimmed away.
I have struggled with this way of life, because many values that I have held have dictated my understanding of how a life should be lived - that is, fully, courageously, and optimistically, and even while life at one instant is not full, courageous or optimistic, I should at least strive towards these qualities. But lately I have come to a tentative realization that both the course and the outcome of life are determined primarily through circumstances not subject to change through human willpower. Or more precisely, they are subject to change only through the willpower of humanity as a collective, but not through the cries of its individual member. The many glorified qualities an individual might have, are a bit like the fur patterns of dogs and cats in an animal shelter, which may or may not cater to the whims of the potential owner or the fads of what is considered good for a dog or a cat at the time. And the notion that this is wrong, that cries actually should help and fur patterns should not be used to judge whether a dog or a cat is good, but instead something more metaphysical should be used, is founded on a sort of anthropocentric, normative naivety, which I still partially harbor, and which bears no causality to the realpolitik of the world.
Strangely, living without a preoccupation to give off an upbeat, teleological underpinning in everything I do has ironically empowered me to do things more effectively, or to use the phrase from my employer, to "be more productive". When I look at the computer screen, solve the countless virtual issues that appear throughout the workweek, and be compelled to drink coffee, I am no longer inconspicuously cynical. I no longer possess the urge I once had to deplore the vulgarity of the modern capitalistic system of labor as I participate in it. I simply devotedly participate, like a rice farmer deweeding his field not because he hates weed with spite or that he likes the strain of hard work, but simply because he needs to eat, and the less weed there is, the more rice he gets.
And insofar as I continue to physically chug along, I don't see a valid counterargument to it.
