“Enjoy the Now!”

I was on the bus home after a shit day; nothing specific happened, it simply was a what’s-the-point-of-being-alive kinda day, mainly spent at work. I was listening to an acoustic version of a favourite song, so terribly raw and unpolished it always makes me shiver, and this time it made me choke. I felt like crying, but no tears came and the feeling lingered.

I hopped off the bus early and walked along the canal, through various parks, trying to “enjoy the now”, as I’ve been advised many times. Yet whenever I noticed an element in my surroundings that I could potentially appreciate, I had to look away so I wouldn’t get trampled by joggers, City suits or buggy-pushing progenitors, coming at me like freight trains racing in an obstacle course.

I got home more down than before. So much for “enjoying the now”.

See, when I focus on the ‘now’, I start wondering whether I should resign to not relating to the majority of humans, that we’re gradually becoming estranged to our environment, and that’s just how it is, “so it goes” wrote Vonnegut.

Man, that bums me out.

It bums me out when I see teenagers meeting up to interact with their phones over each other. When people stub their cigarettes out on flowers. Christ, I even get bummed out when folk chuck random shit in recycling bins.

When I focus on the ‘now’, it becomes way too clear how little there is to enjoy.

I find that many pretend to have found the universal key to happiness, mostly by hiding behind vague, trendy idioms like ‘mindfulness’, ‘self-care’, ‘self-love’, ‘inner-peace’…’be present in the present’. Throwing these terms around might help with fooling oneself in order to cope with existence, although that kind of zealous preaching can reach and convert some of us, who are craving for any solution or explanation for the pain and alienation inflicted on us day after day.

I don’t deny that some joy can be found in the ‘now’ as well as in small things. I do agree that one shouldn’t live in the past – but letting go of the past doesn’t mean completely breaking away from it.

A total rupture from one’s own history would be denying what shaped us into who we are now. Sure, let go of the resentment, of all the stuff that makes you miserable and doesn’t affect anyone else (mostly because people aren’t mind-readers, and also because humans are too self-centred to remember to be considerate towards one another). However I don’t believe the answer lies in mentally suppressing former times to reinvent oneself as to endure the present.

I guess I’m just annoyed (and occasionally pissed off) at a lot of things, most of which are beyond my control…thus making me feel increasingly inadequate and dejected.

Is that what’s waiting for me for the rest my life? Being slowly bummed out by every component around me until I accept to be forever powerless, to survive and protect my little crumbs of joy?

The cycle continues; so I keep on locking myself in my room, avoiding contact with the outside and its inhabitants, except that instead of endlessly scrolling down some phony social media newsfeed, I write up some bullshit with the hope that someone, somewhere, will get what I’m about. “So it goes”.