The speed of life
The human body has limits. Or it doesn’t? I’ve been in the so called best physical shape for years as well as being overweight for years. No matter my shape, the speed of my movements and thinking is still in the same range as ever.
The only moments when I moved faster were when the adrenaline kicked in for life treating events years ago. It had nothing to do with my physical condition. I was just faster and stronger as need it.
My body remembers those moments and tries to replicate the speed. I get angry at myself for the time I waste walking instead of running. I try to walk around at work because people get uncomfortable when others are running around. Why? The speed you live your life at shouldn’t be mine too. I live faster because in the same time interval I have more things to do. You don’t have to keep up. Just don’t hold me back!
Things are even messier in my mind. I hate when I have to interrupt other people thoughts but I don’t mind when I’m interrupted. I guess some people are fit with a cubicle culture while others feel better in open spaces. I am going from one end of the spectrum to another when it comes to align the speed of my perceived time with the time I have to share with others.
When I’m alone, I focus better and I can follow multiple thinking lanes cursing my fingers for not moving faster. I used to do the same when I was around other people, but as I get older, I get grumpier too. I didn’t care about how other people used their brains or time. Now I do.
I just want to scream sometimes: Don’t kill it! It’s you fracking time! The best advice I wished was given and listened to years ago.
With age comes an awareness of your place as a human being in the bigger picture. The useless pursuit of material riches and the related expensively branded fake mindfulness you’re brainwashed to work for comes to an end. For 5% because they get what they want. For the other 95% because they realize they’ll never get it.
You can choose to lay back and enjoy the fruits of your labor. You can also choose to peek behind the curtain into the reality. It’s scary place. A really scary place.
A place where a many millions of years old planet it’s getting destroyed by some self-entitled evolved monkeys in less than a few hundred years. A place where you should be ashamed for allowing your intellect to be brainwashed by your own kind. A place where nobody will remember you after you die because there is nothing you did worth remembering.
And the most important of all is that this place, behind the curtain, is moving so fast that even you if run as fast as you can it still seems like you’re standing still. This place is moving with the speed of life and you are left behind. A dead man lying to himself about being alive.
Short disclaimer: The Journal of an Uber Driver is a work of fiction.
Long disclaimer: The literary exercise to define a nowadays character for a novel led me to create these 25 blog posts. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. Any opinion expressed about Uber should not be interpreted as having a negative connotation. I admire the company as an incumbent of the platform economy and I am a registered Uber driver for research purposes.