The Answer
I’m not sure what any of us are supposed to be doing, and with these drones in our back pockets and screens being meticulously superglued to every surface, the world feels too loud and too demanding. No one seems to have noticed their hours and attention have been getting sold on street corners for less change than you’d find at the bottom of my purse. They tell us to follow our dreams, but if they don’t fit into an eight hour shift or biweekly paycheck, the adults smile sweetly at us like we’ve said something cute, and say okay but what’s your real plan?
They make us confess our desires, putting tubes down our throats and pumping our stomachs dry until they know they’ve hollowed out every last outlying ambition, until they’ve made us into cookie cutter children, ready to fill out cookie cutter applications and live out cookie cutter lives.
My minds digging through history trying to figure out where we went wrong. I feel like at some point, being great- being more, was a good thing. I’ve been asking around, trying to figure out what the end goal is here, but there doesn’t seem to be a consistent answer. I’m beginning to wonder if anyone actually knows. One man told me it was all about finding myself, and another told me knowledge is the banquet of this life. I’ve had some say it’s about family, or hard work, or travel. A good chunk seem to think its about appeasing the man in the clouds, so they can go live there too. But every answer leaves me with more urgent questions. Why?
Whywhywhywhywhy? why.why.why. I need to know
No one can get more than a couple questions deep before they’ve found themselves confused as well, shifted from their comfortable feeling of knowing. I nudge them until they’re screaming questions at the sky with me (we need to know!), until they’ve joined me in running through the streets, asking everyone in sight. How long until someone chuckles at our restless searching, and calming bestows us with The Answer. Or how long until there’s no one calm left. How long until we’re all left screaming?