How useful are you to this world? Maybe a little, maybe a little more or maybe a lot, but this is a relevant question because this question determines your value. If we take all the sentiments aside, the only thing that actually matters to the world is how useful one can be to it. From birth to school to career, one theme you will find a constant in life is that everyone judges you according to your usefulness and yes, your loved ones too.
Nobody wants a dead weight rooming around. If you have nothing much to offer, people will suggest to you time and time again, sometimes subtly and other times directly, that you are worthless and you don’t deserve to exist.
It’s not wrong for world to think like this because world is supposed to be like this. How else can a world function? If something needs to function, it requires parts, little cogs and dials to work properly at their designations. Now some cogs are bigger than others and important than others because some cogs are easily replaceable, and some are not. The cogs and parts whose replacement with the same efficiency is harder to find are obviously more valuable than others. It’s all that simple actually.
A worthless human
Now imagine a person who is careless and unproductive, lethargic and slow, an incompetent being, completely useless to this society, useless to you, to me. What a rotten piece, completely at the bottom of the pool. This type of person does only that much which allows them to pass by. They do not care about the development and progress of our society, well, not that others care much about society, but these kinds of people are even worse because they don’t care about the progress of their own community, family or even self either.
It’s not like they cannot be at an important designation, but they will be there only if they feel comfortable to be there. They do the bare minimum which means they only do what is essential and nothing more. A kind of person after seeing whom, motivational speakers may get nightmares.
Who would like to be this person? Well, mostly all of us. What if I tell you that most of us want to be exactly this kind of person, the only difference is we may have taken a long rout to reach this state.
Sometimes you just can’t do something, so you don’t and sometimes doing something appears unnecessary to you, so you don’t do that either. I am interested in the latter. If I am being honest the idea of becoming a little useful cog in the machinery, we call society is not that alluring to say the least, it’s actually quite opposite. But again, as I said the better functioning part you are, the better your value in the society is, which makes us feel REAL. It makes us feel that we are not just any cog we are a special cog in the machinery. We are IMPORTANT.
A machine by design
In truth, no matter how small a cog may appear until not replaced it is necessary for the functioning of machinery it’s just a matter of how difficult a replacement with same efficiency would be, but every cog is replaceable no matter how important it may look.
No matter how special of a cog you are right now, you will be passed by, replaced, and forgotten, because for society parts are not important, FUNCTIONING is. It will never tell you that though, if you will behave like a useful part by showing good results, it will always appreciate you or at least it will show you appreciation for the time being. It will also reward you, and most of us are doing it for the rewards and appreciation only. In this world need is not that difficult to fulfill but desire on the other hand is a different story.
It’s not that meeting the needs is getting harder day by day but the line that separates desires from needs is shifting farther and farther into the realm of desires day by day. Things that used to be the subject of desires, now seems like essential needs.
There’s nothing much one can do to stop you from accessing your basic needs but the rewards that society gives you are different, they are hard to grab, however, the problem is not that, the problem arises when society keeps promoting these rewards as essential needs. Note that when I say society I am including one’s family in it.
To be comfortable
NOW, after all the hard work, sweat and blood, and all those great words, what we want at the end of the day is simply to be comfortable. Being comfortable is not as easy as it appears, because we always feel discomfort in being here and most of us spent our whole lives being uncomfortable. It always feels like we don’t belong, like we have to make our place here if we want to be accepted. Behind all the greatness and noise there’s a simple desire to belong somewhere, to be comfortable and to feel like we are at home.
Money, power, respect all is nothing but different mediums to feel comfortable and to feel relaxed. Funny how such simple thing can be so difficult and costly to achieve……..or is it? For people who found the comfort for which everyone is running everywhere in the world, on their sofa or chair, this world can look so obsolete. If you can be relaxed and comfortable at the basic level you are probably going to stay incompetent your whole life, at least to others if not to you. Now if someone tells you to get out of your comfort zone, what they are actually saying is to get out of your comfort zone to be comfortable.
Once I heard someone telling someone “To achieve greatness” as an answer to the question that why should I get out of my comfort zone? I thought to myself what kind of greatness could he be achieving by being uncomfortable? Behind all these great words all he himself wants is, simply a comfortable life.
The facade of being uncomfortable.
If you are not comfortable at doing something you will not do it or else you will never enjoy it if you are forced to, it will be nothing more than a necessary inconvenience for you. If you are enjoying doing something that means you are comfortable in doing that work, no matter how hard or difficult it seems to the other person. The moment you yourself feels that it’s hard and difficult to do, you are not comfortable at doing that work anymore. All this advice about going after your passion is nothing but the advice to go after your comfort, in disguise.
Even if you are giving a lot of time of yours into doing something which is a lot of hard work for you, still, you are doing it so that you can have a relatively comfortable life. Everything one does, do it in the hope and desire of comfort. One does things to feel comfortable in their family, to feel comfortable in society and community and to feel comfortable in their own skin.
And this is where the irony starts to take the shape. To spend your whole life uncomfortably just so you can be somewhat comfortable is a typical ironical ark.
Someone, somewhere not working that hard.
You can’t say much to a person who is comfortable before anything, and peaceful already, you can’t offer much to them, and you can’t scare them much either. I have heard that because life has no intrinsic meaning to it, one can give it whatever meaning they want to. But I don’t think that makes much of a difference. If something is meaningless by nature, your given meaning to it, whatever it is, will also be meaningless. Your given meaning to life is going to shatter again and again because that is not its meaning and in the process you yourself will shatter again and again.
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For the greater good
A truly nihilistic person can never give any meaning to anything. This person will not play a losing game, not because they are afraid of losing but because they don’t want to win, and the game can be played only if you want to win. They say the most dangerous person in this world is the one who has nothing to lose, but I think that’s not true. The most dangerous person in this world is the one who has nothing to lose and has nothing to gain either… also, this person is most comfortable too.
Now, could it be that you can be comfortable without much of anything? Could it be that somewhere some procrastinator or a lazy person is far more comfortable than the most of others? Maybe, maybe not, but one thing is certain these questions are dangerous for the proper functioning of society and world as a whole. For the betterment of society one should be a proper functioning cog, one should keep oiling themselves so that they can keep working hard and at their best, till they are replaced or dead, for the greater good of society, and to leave this legacy for your next generation after the death and so that they can do the same.
In the end
To get to a point with a straight line and to the same point after creating a spiral can be the real comfort providing insight while living and can be a real painful hindsight while dying. But if I am being honest, it’s more like getting nowhere after running for miles and miles, and also getting nowhere after just a few steps. Sometimes it’s just about saving the hassle.
A person who is really comfortable as it is, is a person who is really useless or at least not much of a use to society, therefore they want you to stay and remain uncomfortable till the end..
