Better

People ceased to be human as soon as the Industrial revolution started. We adopted the mentality that being part of an assembly line was the only way to be productive. We started driving automobiles instead of using our feet and smelling the fresh air. We stopped thinking for ourselves and we chose to focus on simple processes handed down to us by the “big boss”. Bolt after bolt after bolt, we screw it in, we reach for the next one and on it goes. The fresh air was slowly tainted with the gasses of factories and we let it happen because fighting it was just too big a battle to take upon ourselves. We adopted the business mentality that everything needs to be bigger, faster and easier to manage. No more working in the farm to earn your keep, go out into that big wide world and find a gap in the market. Win the masses over with your revolutionary new gadget that will keep everyone in the now instead of the dreary past of actual hard work.

Electricity was the scariest thing to happen to all of us. If you stop to think about it now, what would we do without electricity? No television for entertainment, no oven or microwave to cook our processed food, no trains for a cheaper form of transport and no appliances to maintain our modern households. There would be no Internet, no globalisation and no light when it is so incredibly dark that all you could possibly want is an iota of vision. We would be lost without electricity. We might even be dark savages, more savage than we are now. I sometimes wonder if we all just have a predisposition to be savage no matter what advancements we make as a human race. Human beings have got darker as the night sky has got lighter. Lit up by the street lamps and the night owls working hard past their due time. We have to work harder for a good value of life but miss out on that value because we are too busy working. If we had never experience electricity or the digital age then there would really be no wondering but what if one day it all just disappears? We would be absolutely lost!

Picnic spots are replaced by shopping malls. Roads replace parks. Cars have replaced bicycles and horses. There is no common decency, only what rulebooks and street signs tell us is right. Our rules on dressing ourselves come from glossy magazines and television programmes. Our way of life is dictated by what is cool and what is not. We follow our chosen group around like sheep and have no will to think any different. I used to think that I would go to University and change the world, I went to University but the world changed me. I faded into the background like a wallflower because trying to stand out in a sea of people was just way too demanding on my psyche.

I often wonder what my life would be like had I chosen to lead a simpler life. What would I have chosen to be and what type of person would I be? Would I be content or would I yearn for the fast paced life of the city girl I am now? I look at the Buddhists and I think to myself, “Can I go there? Can I be like them?” I would choose to take a vow of silence. What peace it must be to never have to speak. What sweet relief it must be to never have to utter a word. To never have to think of things to say just because others feel awkward being silent. The people in this world who live the simpler lives: they are the real geniuses. They are content to wear a colourless robe and live with their own thoughts. They are the real heroes of the world. The ones who choose to live in peace without taking any fuels from this one and only home we have. What a world this would be if we gave it all up and went back to our roots, the people we would idolise would be of a completely different calibre. There would be no more living life bolt by bolt and task by task. We would just be. We would maybe even be better.