While I'm walking through life, wondering how I get where I'm now, wondering why certain things happen to me, I do my best to stay equanimous. After all, what I experience might be just the right thing for me to learn, so is it really worth it to lament my fate?
A long, long time ago, when I met my first 'true love', I managed to totally freak her out by telling a story. Coming from an average, maybe even sub-average socio-economic background, calling a tiny rented subterranean apartment home, I fantasised about about being a writer.
I didn't deliberately call myself poor, and being able to rent a space, own an ancient beetle as car as a student indicated somehow I wasn't probably the wealthy provider for a potential family. I might have been charming, good-looking and interesting, someone to have fun with, but certainly would have failed to provide the prospect for a prosperous, care-free family life to come.
Aware of all the stories of the disowned heirs of noble blood, I reframed my meagre existence as research. You know, sweetheart, living in this tiny place, cash-strapped, optimistic yet limited is nothing but research for a book about average Joe. Coming from an enormously wealthy background, how could I ever write about 'common people' without immersing myself to a low-life existence?
I really loved her, still I probably hurt her a lot by making up a story about myself which was convincing, but still total fantasy. The only truth in it was my aspiration not to repeat the fate of my family, being an insignificant cog in the machine of society, subject to the whims of those who really ran the show.
My father, who died before I really got to know him, just so managed to feed his family as a labourer, got me into the strange idea to earn a living by virtue of my brain, instead of my hands. He probably realised that honest work in a dishonest society imposes limits of what you can achieve.
So instead of learning a 'real' trade, I embarked on IT work, at a time when it was booming and breaking boundaries. Being more of an introvert, programming and maintaining computers and networks allowed me to prosper for a while. I became financially independent, to an extent where money piled up, because coming from a frugal background, I didn't know how to spend it as fast as it came in.
I achieved what the norms of society define as 'success', making lots of money, but it came with a price. It just didn't make me happy, as I noticed how arbitrary the relation between work and payment was. At some point, while making about $150 an hour, sitting in front of a computer screen, seeing the cleaners sorting out the office, I wondered whether I deserve all that money while seeing someone doing 'real' work for probably less per day than I made for an hour.
The story I had told my first big love at the time had turned into reality, I became a commercially successful entity in a thoroughly corrupt society, no need to worry about my spending capacity. It didn't make me happy, though.
I felt like an impostor. While I loved the challenges of my job, I hated the circumstances of it. I turned from a tiny cog to a bigger cog in the machinery of doom, using my talents to prosper and maintain a system which needs lots of victims to function.
The system is a vampire, just like Shapeshifter stated. The bigger system though, the system of life in this universe, might as well support me, as the system of doom did before. Transforming the system of society has become my aim now, albeit all the strange experiences I went through since them.
We all have to make the choice, playing the game for our own pleasure, or changing it for our own fulfillment. As I've seen both sides of it, I'm determined not to go back to play the rotten game just to keep it alive. If this attitudes kill me, so be it.
