THE HUNGER FOR MEANING: Scrolling while your soul starves, and yearning to escape.

THE HUNGER FOR MEANING
Scrolling while your soul starves.

It’s important to me to remember that people also experienced existential crises in the 80s. One of my schoolmates committed suicide. He stared out of the window one day, just before we were reprimanded for speaking in class, and he said, “I’m not sure I want to do this… go to uni, get married, work, raise kids, retire.” He internalized all of man’s search for meaning in one line.

Later that year, I was there, just after he had swerved into oncoming traffic. And in dull surprise, I didn’t even know what I had witnessed. I did not have the words back then to articulate my emotions.

Are we hanging in there these days? It’s not easier these days, but the challenges on our screens exacerbate the feelings of uselessness. We are told we don’t achieve. We are shown how happy couples tour the world in seeming effortless ease.

And I believe it at times. I’m still human, despite forging deliberate efforts against the machine that bombards me with informational sludge. I disconnect regularly from social media. That’s all I can do.

But beyond that, I need to understand why I need to disconnect.
This is the language you learn when belief bleeds into knowing.
It’s like any addiction. Quitting just because they tell you it’s bad is not enough. You need to know, once you realize, you do believe. Once the skin is stripped from your bones, you cross the threshold between believing and knowing.

And I use empirical data. It’s not necessarily scientific.
I know because the noise is gone and I don’t miss it.
I know because the hours stretch instead of collapse.
I know because I hear myself think without needing to respond.
I know because nothing happens, and somehow, that’s enough.