Quiet witnessing of hard truths

We've come to a point where there seems no way out, only through. Through the rage and pain of disenfranchisement. Of not having enough while there is enough.

The soulcraft left gasping for air, unable to fully express itself.

We've been told to work harder.

That we have it good.

That if we just saved more, spent less, became more "entrepreneurial," upskill, agentify, we could outrun the hand we were dealt.

That the systems strangling us are too big, too entrenched to change, so really it just best not to try.

My hand trembles as I type this.

My heart aches.

I stare blankly at the screen, caught in a whirlwind of thoughts, feelings, vibrations running through my very being.

I feel the pressure to make money.

To pay bills.

To keep up.

To stay informed.

To stay relevant.

To provide for my family.

To scrape by in a world in decay.

I will never own a home.

Never lay claim to land, or anything we've called "wealth."

What the fuck is ownership anyway?

An inheritance to pass down when my Earthian body of ashes is decaying as the ecologies that once held us are ripped apart, all for a hallucination we dared to call prosperity?

I don't know.

I think I do. I can name it in theory.

I can research and call to the gods of data points.

I can analyse and synthesise.

I can intellectualise and philosophise.

But deep inside, I feel, I do not know.

I have insecure income.

A nonlinear, fractured path that does not fit the maps they gave me.

I have too much on my plate. Physically, financially, emotionally, psychically.

My personal and business life is messy.

I have no motivation to clean it up.

No drive to "get my house in order".

I am meant to tidy a masters house built on foundations destined for decay.

For what?

To win at a dying game?

To pass down debts disguised as dreams?

Is this my failure?

The hegemonic culture whispers, yes.

The memes mock my divergence.

I didn't specialise. I wandered. I listened to callings they never taught me to name.

I didn't save wisely.

I fought addictions I couldn't outrun.

I bore traumas that didn’t fit their neat categories.

I failed to become the hero of the self-made myth and survivorship bias story sold to desperate souls.

I feel gaslighted.

Told that life has never been better, that it's easier than ever to "make it," that my despair is simply poor perspective.

But I know what I feel.

What I've felt since I was a wee little Earthian.

That how we exist and how we relate is broken.

Maligned to life itself.

I am not failing at life.

I am feeling the true cost of trying to stay human entangled in inhumane systems.

And what will I pass down to my children?

Not property.

Not security.

But patterns.

Memetic and epigenetic.

Wounds and seeds.

Can I practice degrowth at the soul level?

I wonder if my attention, my energy, are misplaced.

That being introspective does not pay the bills.

That being aware of my shadow is not "productive."

That grief is an indulgence, divergence a defect, and belief beyond the mundane and material a pathology.

The mess I carry is born of an unholy house for a dying god that colonised my mind and body.

But I refuse to tidy the altar of a god already rotting.

My heart mind knows.

I breathe.

I release.

I remember.

Impermanence.

Flux.

The braided strands of past, present, and future weaving themselves into this aching, sacred now.

I am being revealed.

We are being revealed.

This is the apocalypse I dare to feel into.

Not as end, but as unveiling.

A quiet, trembling witnessing of what is hardest to name.

And still, I remain.