Life. Such a simple word. L-I-F-E. Four letters—that is all it took for me to capture something so powerful that it cannot be comprehended or contained in the mind of a non-thinker. By that I mean, people who live passively. In the passenger seat, to be precise.

Through all of society’s chaotic noises, most of us get lost in a way we don’t even realize. I have to go to work, I have to get a home by the time I am 30, I need to have dash-dash worth of assets in the span of 10 years… And so goes on, the loophole of running on autopilot. Rarely stopping to notice the calm around us.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I am all heads for the hustle, and trying to provide for a better life for oneself. Growth is part of the journey, after all. What I do mean, I guess, is that why do we tend to immerse ourselves in the troubles of everyday and materialism so much? When in fact the whole point was to live, to experience, to have fun? To be alive?

I am no researcher. I haven’t dug in deep on how and why the society functions the way it does. Stocks, politics, businesses, and so on and so forth. I am not here to question any of that, “the system,” at all! But when I do see someone working their being off, just to get hold of that one object they want so much, what I cannot help but notice is, why such a sacrifice? I mean, we’ve got a limited timeline here.

When did “striving for a good lifestyle” become consuming to the point where we are ready to leak our present off in exchange for the promise that tomorrow would be better? Tomorrow will be better… But, tomorrow may also not be.

That house we plan to build, we may not even live up to see its completion. That car we have dreamt of skidding in the neighborhood? Well, at the end of it all, I’m sure none of us would be thinking about how good it felt to sit behind the steering of a metal on four wheels.

As I sit here, penning my thoughts down, all I can think about is how we let our consciousnesses slip by. How we forget to be fully present while chasing our goals. Because, when I think of 30-40 years ahead from now, I wish to lay on my deathbed, and mutter to myself, “Oh boy, whatever the hell that was, it was one damn of a ride.”