When you feel too sick to pat a purring cat, it truly is a sad day indeed.
Why is it that we only realize how lucky we are to be fit and healthy only when we start to feel physically ill? I say, being in major pain does put things into perspective - and suddenly, studying to get an outstanding score on that final exam doesn't feel like a dramatic issue anymore.
Funny how suffering gives me philosophic reflections. Also turns me into a whining mess but that's another story.
The other day I was shopping at the mall because I needed a new pair of jeans. It was, I think, a Monday afternoon, and the mall was mostly empty. As I was walking down the deserted alleys, I started to feel uneasy. All around me stood empty shops full of merchandise waiting to be sold, so much merchandise - plastic accessories, brightly-colored clothes, shoes, boots, kitchen tools, perfumes, beauty products, books, and countless others.
All those shiny brand new merchandises, they had no personality, they were merely a cheap sugar coating for the total lack of deepness of our busy, stressed and compulsive consumer society. It's a fact I've always been aware of, but that day, in that empty mall, it hit me. In a society that idealizes consumption as a mean to define one's identity and values productivity, people live stressful lives to earn money to afford a way of life they don't even have the time to enjoy, running after happiness like a dog running after its tail.
It felt all so wrong it was sickening. So I left without that new pair of jeans I was looking for, and as I was heading back to the exit, I couldn't help feeling strangely sad. Am I not normal? Am I the only one feeling this way? All around me I see people criticizing capitalism and abusive consumption, but nobody seems to have a problem living with it - they are cynical about the society they live in, yet they go out every week end and buy the newest fashionable goods like everybody else.
sick
calm