something about life, i guess
You're born. The world is two people, maybe four, and they all come stuffed in a warm fuzzy home. There's not much to be done for joy. Poop your pants today, pee on your cheeks tomorrow, maybe mumble some garble that resembles a word. And your world claps and laughs and adores you. Voila, you feel loved.
You're four now. Your world is fifty people and a road from home to school to home again. There's other four year old's and a lady who scribbles garbles on a big black wall. Turns out pooping your pants could only get you so far. You miss the claps and the laughs and the love. There's this girl, she never comes second in a race. She gets the claps. This guy can make fart sounds with his underarms. He gets the laughs. This other girl, she does nothing really but you envy the way she's adored. Maybe as she has that pinup nose and those pearly whites. You, with your lazy calves and your unacoustic armpits and that elastic face, you miss the love that was once so easy. So you yell 'chicken legs' at the running girl and you hear claps and laughs and those fifty people, now, all adore you. Turns out, you're destined as the class clown. Turns out you'll be cracking jokes to feel the love you miss out here.
You're fourteen. Your world is two hundred people and fifty roads. There's cousins who outsmart you, so you feel the pressure to score A's. But worse, there's other class clowns now. And they're better. And you are the muse of their jokes. They get the claps and the laughs. Your crush adores them. So you learn to take a joke. 'Yes, Arjun, my face is quite oily. In fact it looks like Jupiter's Io moon.' You begin to get back the claps and the laughs and the love. Arjun knows he can't poke at your face anymore, so he sniffs out another insecurity. Aah, insecurities, such a small word, and such a big testimony to all that hair sprouting under your arms. So you learn to laugh it off too. Pretty soon, that's all you're doing, laughing at yourself and your flaws, to find approval and love, in an ever expanding world. You wear that mask of self love and keep drilling at your faults, so much so you forget to build on your strengths. The first thing any stranger ever hears you say is a lame joke on your skinny frame, lest they say it before you. You're funny, you're sporty, you're charming, but you're exhausted. Somewhere between running races, and topping classes, and reciting poems, and cracking jokes, you've forgotten being loved had never needed such effort.
You''re eighteen. You enter college. Your world is six thousand people and two cities. You don't want to laugh at your flaws now that you get to begin again. You start taking photos and making videos. Funny videos. Serious videos. Art videos. You put it all out online and watch the numbers grow. They don't have the ring of claps and laughs, but they feel fine. You focus on your talents, your strengths, your calling. And it works. You're finally doing what comes so naturally to you, and along the way, you're making friends and you're feeling loved. Even strangers adore you. It's almost like you were a four kilo baby peeing on his face, and getting clapped for it. You make the best of friends and you feel blessed to have them. It looks like being yourself was the key.
You're twenty two. You're in your office now. Your world is seven billion people and all of the cities and roads ever made. You feel tiny and alone. That talent thing doesn't work with your boss. He cares for numbers and profits and how close you wear the tie to your neck. You imagine numbers must be his pee-on-the-face, but he's too grumpy to be a man that feels loved. It's November. Your best friend forgot your birthday. You want to laugh it off but it hurts. You have insecurities, you have strengths, but none of the seven billion really seem to care. So you go out for a drink. Lonely on your birthday night, you could make a poetic video on it, you think. But there's no time. You meet someone at the bar. Maybe you're too drunk to talk, maybe you're overwhelmed, but you can't seem to speak. The stranger laughs, but with no judgement in the eyes. You mumbled a garble and a stranger laughed. It took twenty two years but it has happened again.
You're falling in love. Your world is now one person and the room they're in. It's scary how little matters to you anymore. All the lovers that fought the world to be together, they don't seem mad anymore. You want to run from this, to deny yourself a happiness you were always looking for. Your beloved is a revelation, that you won't find joy at the bottom of a pool of cash, or behind a billboard with your name on top, or on the moon burried under some crater, or in the canyons or the oceans or any of the stars. The stranger is a revelation that love hides behind the soul of observing eyes. That love cares for neither your flaws nor your strengths. It will take time but you can see that you will be adored without efforts, something you've seeked since you first left home, or maybe since you departed that dark, cushiony floater they call a womb. And who knows, maybe, maybe, if you are that lucky, maybe when you're sixty and you lose the many loves of your life, or maybe if they're wise enough to show you how, maybe you'll learn that the world is not even two or three or ten people. No, maybe it is just you, your body and the air that it breathes.