The Wars We Prepare For Are Never The Ones We Have To Fight

When we’re young, we’re reprieved from that oppressive, nagging sense of obligation that ruins so much of our lives. We’re freed from the worry that we really ought to be doing something productive instead. We savour the time stolen. It is time knowingly and joyfully squandered. As we get older, we start to worry about potential conspicuous gaps in our resumes. We start to worry about worries as if some weird plague has claimed all of us above the age of 25.

Soon, we become the byproduct of industrialization.

To be fair, it isn’t that bad till we realise there is something more insidious and perverse lurking within our daily routines. We begin to regard people who enjoy leisure activity as incomprehensible and faintly disturbing in their bizarre enthusiasms, though it is essentially harmless to us. Why wouldn’t they stop wasting time on such imbecilic things and do something more useful with their lives? They can pick up a new skill, work out to keep themselves in shape, or even acquire an additional side-hustle.

It is at this moment we start to loathe ourselves.

Somehow in the midst of being productive professionals, we have forgotten the need for room to grow strange and introspective. We have forgotten what it is like to be an idler and a dreamer. The idle notions that we always laughed about as remote possibilities when we were younger hit us once again. Remember how it felt like sitting by the stream in the morning mist? It felt so blissful. The moment was absolute for me, I felt like I could live in it forever. This is what happiness feels like.