01 January, 2025

Behind The Code

I didn't always feel this way, and it's taken a lot of years of living to get to the point where I can honestly say, I would have liked to have had children. Which is not to say that I regret how things turned out. I struggle to manage my own life; I don't think it would be a good idea to put me in charge of somebody else's. Although, you never know, having children might have been the catalyst to motivate me to make the changes I could never make within myself. I know that's not a good gamble to place the wellbeing of another life upon. But let's be fair, people doom their offspring to much worse over much less every. single. day.

It's kind of how evolution and the propagation of the species works. It clashes with the sophisticated illusion of civilization we've constructed for ourselves, but spray and pray is the name of the game. You could be forgiven for doubting it if you've never left the middle class bubble that I grew up in. But look around down here at the bottom of the pyramid, and you simply can't avoid stepping in it. It makes you realize that in spite of all that so-called "sapience", we're still just apes in human clothing.

Anyway, from a certain perspective, caring for another generation is the most selfless act you can commit. But in my experience, making the conscious decision (which, to be fair, was easy - given the lack of opportunities handed to me) to sacrifice my chance at passing on my genes, and trying my hand at that delicious form of human clay molding known as parenthood, in order to spare a single other human being even the possibility of experiencing the absolute torture of what it is to go through life with my outlook - feeling that every minute of every day, there is an invisible train bearing down on me, and that my world will crumble to pieces in an instant with no warning, and that decades of living without that happening isn't enough to convince myself that I can ever breathe easy - is the most conscientious and selfless act (not to mention thankless) I could ever conceive of.

Because no amount of being smart, being attractive, being witty or insightful - none of it is worth it. I shouldn't have ever come into existence in the first place. But it's not like anybody could have known that before it happened. And since I'm here now, I'm still gonna make the most of it. I'm just saying, it's easier not to start the game than it is to shut it off before you're finished. But, man, life is a cosmic joke. And if there's a God up there (spoiler: there isn't), he's as sick and twisted as his followers say he's kind and all-loving. Sometimes I wish I could just close my eyes and shut it all out. I've seen too much of what goes on behind the curtains. It's no gift being able to read the code. I don't even get to manipulate it!