Family is boring! Television is boring! Friends are boring! Life is boring! Nothing makes me feel satisfied. I live my life like I am watching TV — it all just passes in front of me. I am a passive observer of life. I keep buying clothes, eating food, and collecting friends, but I still end up feeling like an inflatable ball with a slow puncture.
But at the same time I drive people away, then complain when I am alone. I spend money on unnecessary things, then plead poverty.
Is it true that life is exciting, meaningful, and satisfying? Why don't I feel that? What or who has cheated me out of living a productive, happy, satisfying life? Who can I blame for the superficial tinge that has taken over my life?
It is not just me who feels like that. Most of the people I know are going through this too. Sometimes we sit and talk about the latest fashion, the best restaurant we have been to, and the greatest films we've seen. Fun is something we are supposed to have, but life seems like a favorite song that has been played over and over again until it has lost its magic and beauty. And when the song is over, I feel this heavy downer and wish I hadn't played it in the first place.
Some people blame this state of nothingness on urban sprawl. They blame the concrete jungles of modern cities that dehumanize people, the modern mechanisms of record keeping that reduce people to numbers on a computer.
Others blame the cutting down of trees, the death of nature. No more beauty. Maybe that's it! But human beings are supposed to be beautiful and there are human beings everywhere! So have people just become "unbeautiful"? Have I lost my own inner beauty? Is our inner beauty so closely dependent on the external conditions of life? I'm not so sure.
In the meantime I have this feeling that I want to be alone, perhaps to discover the beauty that I hope exists within me. I want to sit on a quiet beach and just listen to the crashing of the waves instead of car horns and people shouting and complaining, echoing my own voice. I want to feel the sand beneath my feet and walk on its softness instead of the harshness of concrete, bricks, and cement. I fear my heart may end up as hard as the walls surrounding me.
I want to lie back and look up at a blue sky and watch fluffy white clouds move peacefully wherever the wind blows them instead of looking around and seeing hard cold walls and doors that lock. I want to feel I am a part of all this beauty of nature so I can feel at peace, at home — something that the hustle and bustle of urban life sucks out of me, leaving me panting on my hands and knees, facing life with hesitation and a smattering of fear.
But even after the days are spent and I've lived in nature, at peace for a time, I still have to go back and face the cement and steel constructions built by man in pride and self-indulgence. I will take myself with me wherever I go. Am I forced to be a part of something that I know is slowly but surely chipping away at who I am and who I want to be?
But hang on, is it right that I blame others for what I am and how I feel? Can I be a spiritual giant, I ask myself, and rise above all this? If so, why do I still feel so rotten? Perhaps I'm not a spiritual giant after all. Shouldn't a spiritual giant be able to go with leaps and bounds up and over life's travesties?
Is it that I'm sitting making up excuses for what I stop myself from doing? Is it me? Am I my own enemy? Is life rotten because my soul is unclean, full of complaints, grudges, fear, and bitterness? Am I the one who gives up and gives in to the weakness of my spirit and that of others? Is the answer to clear away the rottenness from my own heart and soul, and build outward to make the world, wherever I am, a better place? Can I plead piety when all I do is complain about what is and what I am not?
Read More: Islam Online
