Complacency

Here are my thoughts on complacency:

Though my mom wishes I didn’t say this, I once stained a pristine, off-white couch with a brown substance at the innocent age of two years old–it was not paint. This was the type of open, casual rebellion that marked my early childhood. Multitudes of vegetables were stuffed under tables, sand castles were destroyed with fire and brimstone, and toys became dented and discolored by my small, grubby hands. I even had the confidence to openly use a neon-orange umbrella to shield my then pasty skin from the blazing sun in 6th grade. Even though a kid accused me of being a vampire, it remains a definite reminder of what once was.

These triumphant moments fill me with nostalgia, but are destined to stay in the dusty crevices of my mind. This realization pushed me into an existence filled with unconcern and carelessness. My frequent thought: “We might get nuked by North Korea? Eh, I have other things to worry about, like watering my pet plant,” reflects my simple, inherent disinterest.

Earlier this year, I went to visit my family overseas, and the humid summer of the Philippines melted my being into nothingness. The pleasant warmth lulled me into a gentle malaise, and even the furniture seemed to languish in the heat. I didn’t check a watch or a clock, and I let my phone die, too lazy to charge it. Without hours and minutes, the days and nights fused into one, and I repeatedly wandered throughout my relatives’ house in a complete daze. One day, I settled on a yellow couch, laying there for what seemed to be an eternity, drifting in and out of sleep. By now, my cousins’ summer break was over, and their rigid work ethic was starkly contrasted by my immobile body. I was satisfied by simply existing, and the morning transformed into afternoon, which then slowly gave way to the darkness of night.

I continued to marinate in this feeling of disinterest for the rest of the summer. Wherever I walked, it felt like my body was floating several inches from the ground, supported by nothing. My eyes were like two gigantic movie screens, and I was simply a man inside my head, lazily gazing at the colorful, moving images. At that point in time, it seemed as if I was doomed to endlessly glide through space and time. On a side note, I don’t dabble in the world of psychedelics.

I met a man in the summer who helped puncture this growing balloon of apathy. I was at a bus station, desperately trying to interpret a map filled with brightly colored routes that attacked my vision. A strong gust of wind knocked the map out of my hands, and a sense of foreboding filled my heart as it drifted then skittered across the ground to an elderly Asian man, quietly sitting nearby. Of course, it landed directly between his feet. I awkwardly walked to him, trying to drown out possible dialogue.

He was definitely not pleased. Hoping to staunch the surging flow of his ancient wrath, I quickly said, “Sumimasen,” which is Japanese for, “Please, forgive me.”

These words fell deafly on his ears, like a feeble wind barely touching a mighty mountain. His disapproving eyes bored deep into my soul, and by the time he gave me the map, I regretted even exiting my mother’s womb. After I boarded the bus, my brain was still numb, continually playing back that painfully long exchange.

In this memory, our traditional roles were turned upside down. An elderly man had the same fiery passion becoming of a youth in their salad days, while I struggled against the drag of disinterest that consumes the retired. My existence would only become more pathetic if I yielded to laziness and disinterest this early in my life.

The degree of lethargy that I experienced may not affect the majority of the population, but it manifests itself in tiny ways, like refusing to emerge from the cavernous depths of a couch, or mindlessly tapping on a screen, letting the spectral, blue light wash over you. For me, the allure of the fake, LED lit abyss will be present for eternity, but as humans, we must overcome all of our inner demons, with an elderly, Asian man’s help or not. In the vast scheme of the universe, our lives are relatively meaningless, but in the shallow scope of humans, the end of our short existence is the ultimate deadline. There’s little time for rotting in the sea of complacency, so get up and shake off those barnacles.