The pattern

I just realised something today. Possibly the bloggers meet I attended thanks to a friend may have been quite instrumental in bringing about this realisation, but to give credit where it's due, an unsung hero has to felicitated anonymously. I'd first like to thank him, without whom I'd have continued in a repetitive trance of doing the same things again and again.

Allow me to digress. They say, a picture speaks a thousand words. But that may not be always true. Maybe a thousand words spoken in a rant or in the utterings of a rambling man. A few incisive words spoken in a right manner at a right time can have an effect on a man that could change his entire life. Well, it may not change my perspective on life entirely in this case, but I would be daft to underestimate the importance of this realisation.

To continue with the digression, I like the movie Fight Club; I've watched it numerous times. However, it is only today, thanks to a few words that I've realised that I've been living life exactly like Edward Norton was. I've become a yuppie, a victim to the establishment that I have rebelled against in my university days, something that I had vowed and strived not to become once I graduated.

My life over the past two years has been a cycle that has repeated itself over and over, over a period of 730 days, changing only in content, but not in character. It has been like a chipping machine that cuts wood chips in the same size and shape, with just the type of wood changing. I feel dehumanised, an automaton, a brainless consumer that does the same things again and again out of force of habit, things that he doesn't need to do, things that aren't really enriching his life, things that aren't really necessary to make him happy. In the words of George Carlin, "I need to stop buying shit I don't need". Rather I need to stop buying into the bullshit perpetrated as entertainment, refreshment and lifestyle; watching insipid movies on weekends because it's a ritual to do so, munching popcorn and sipping coke from fancy glasses merchandising the equally insipid characters; eating the same food at the same restaurants out of force of habit, even though the prices there are ridiculous and the taste average. I have repressed the memories of heights of gastronomic nirvana attained in the Udupi hotels in Matunga, replacing them with the bland repetitive tastes of various food joints dotting Orchard Road, Clarke Quay and Serangoon Road.

I have settled for something substandard, I have settled for something that wasn't me to begin with. I have betrayed myself as I was at my finest hour, settling for something that is clearly inferior, just because I did not wish to be a renegade, because I did not wish to stand out and be discriminated against. Because I was afraid of leading the revolution.

Shame! shame!

I don't know if tomorrow will be different. I don't know if there will be a revolution. I don't know if I will break from this mould that's trying to cast me into someone that I know I am not. But I know all this, which is what matters. At least, as the last vestiges of my own self are crushed by the machinery working fulltime to turn me into a stooge that loyally empties his pockets to run the machine that is working to destroy his individuality, I will know what hit me. I will not go into the darkness oblivious of what snuffed out the light. At least, now I know there's a ghost in the machine.