Disconnected

I have found my mind slipping to places that I’d rather it not. Not yet has it arrived to dark places, but I can feel it tip-toeing that line and that path that leads to ever less light.

Why? So many reasons.

One of which is the looking outside and feeling like a prisoner in a world and society not that does not quite work. It’s not inherently bad, it’s not obviously evil or oppressive, but it’s that feeling that it’s not the way it’s meant to be. I can’t help but look out the window, and when I do, I see houses, and roads, and cars. I walk outside, and I walk along pats, cars drive by, there is the murmur of chatter all around, and yet it still doesn’t quite feel the way it’s supposed to feel.

Is it the greys of the concrete and tarmac or the general overwhelm of a noise? Or is it deeper, is the sense of walking along roads where fields and forests must have once flourished, and rather than a natural landscape of life and wonder we’re presented with pavements and houses?

There is something in looking around and all the things around me that does not work. It’s the amount of notification on our phones and the constant fight for your attention, and it just is not right.

It’s the sitting in an office, earning money for someone else so you can keep 10% of the value you make, so you can buy unnecessary things to fill that void in your life.

I feel disconnected because I can’t understand how this is what we’ve made everything, and I can’t understand how our lives are painted as normal, when they are so unnatural.

The changing tide of society has far outpaced our biological evolution. For 95% of human history, we have lived in fields and forests, working with our hands, immersed in sunlight and adventure. We now spend our time in open plan offices. Is it a wonder that people feel detached and restless? Or is a surprise that we feel trapped by a society, when it is so unnatural?

We’re experiencing an existential dissonance because our lives feels unnatural; and they feel unnatural because they are. We are wired for stories, intensity, and adventure; and yet we’re expected to go shopping, decorate your house, go for a coffee. How can beings wired for adventure, growth, and wilderness and story, function when stuck inside a machine of convenience, exploitation, repetition, and domestication?

I feel disconnected because I feel that I don’t belong. It’s easy to blame yourself when you don’t fit in, and it’s easy to feel that you’re the odd one out. It’s easy, and it’s lonely. It’s lonely to feel such a disconnect that you feel it in your body. It can eat away at you, and it can lead you to dark places that end with the feeling that if you don’t belong, perhaps it’s better if you weren’t here.

The truth is that perhaps there is a bravery in feeling disconnected, and a unique courage in being lonely despite it all. This society is unnatural, and to feel out of place in such a world should be normal. To feel that disconnect means a strong sense of being that many people are seemingly sleeping on. To be yourself, and to stand up for your feelings, in a world that values conformity and compliance is an act of freedom and rebellion that we should be proud of. It lights the way for others.