This Is What We’re Realizing, Albeit Slowly
By Albert Soren
What is the nature of this particular form of energy? Speedy, unreal, sickening, powerful. The tremendous artifice of that energy. The reason they are sipping that second or third coffee is that they want to be jangly. They are seeking out jangly.
The answer is the height of every high is small at its summit — what we imagine to be the next mountain, is a pit.
Another inebriated gulp, a shaky hand stirs a third coffee, an exhale behind glassy eyes.
Confidence flows through you so quickly you can’t tell if, or when, it arrived.
Our immediate response to endorphins is greed—’how can this be maintained, preserved, extended—more, better, longer, fast-acting™’—everything must be an improvement—life becomes an endless incline where upon each rise is only dwarfed by the next; but, there are no peaks.
You only break above the waves gasping for air, and through this struggle, endure. Sisyphus stumbles down the hill. Survival imposes life’s beauty upon us.
We want to be stoic, to play the antihero of our lives; but we feel too much, too often, too fast; your mind spins every interaction into a web of implications.
The net extends farther from reality and you confuse that distance for legitimacy—spinning your wheels conceals your uncertainty.
Your mind becomes our undoing, as beings outside of ourselves, we create an artifice, a distance from which to criticize every move.
As endorphins surge, existence is realized.
We no longer crave, but acquiesce.
We no longer confront the world, but watch the line between it and ourselves dissolve.
If to be anxious, is to crave uncertainty—this energy is our control—and we latch on for dear life.