Do you ever wonder why you wake up; like what makes it so great and different from the day before it or the next day to come, or does it all feel like a routine in a gerbil maze — wake up at some given time, poo once a day to once a week, eat one to seven meals daily, sit in a cubicle of your mind (whether in an office, at home, or work space), find ways to get more exercise (pay for a gym membership, buy a dog, buy gym equipment), rinse, and repeat.

Some people thank others for giving them a reason to “rise and shine”, some thank the great creator, and others are just grateful when they get their flavor donut from the mix. Others have death, dismemberment, divorce, and depression to fill their day and yet they find a way to crawl out of bed to face another eight to sixteen hours of conscious time away from dreams that could be extraordinary, regardless if they’re remembered — kind of like sex with an ex.

What is the motivating factor that drags people into social situations, painful processes, and anxiety attacks from stress at work, lectures from parents, and deadlines at school? What do we tell ourselves daily is worth it — the booze or chocolate, the new show or tenth rerun, the neighbor or the alley cat. What do we feel we owe the world with our existence? What separates us from those that lose this feeling, so much that they’re able to take their own life and sometimes the lives of others with them.

Suicidal people feel that their life is an endless tunnel into destruction and darkness, and that their heartbeat is a burden on society that would be better without them. They feel that no amount of activities that used to bring them happiness — finding cloud shapes, playing peek-a-boo, climbing a new mountain, finishing a book, learning a new technique, getting accepted into a program — no longer do. What can they do to bring this feeling back — with who, with what?

Is there a certain formula for happiness, for success in life, for just existing and being ok with that? Nature is made to evolve and changes drastically, but what happens when people are too afraid to follow suit — and where did this fear come from? People seem to want to be the best — fastest, smartest, loudest — but they don’t all want to do what it takes to get there. We had competition built into our nature, and then we built around it to protect those too weak, too young or old, too poor to compete for the resources that would keep them alive.

People need a purpose, which is sadly why so many work at dead-end jobs, sometimes multiple ones, to feel needed, to feel that they are serving society and making a difference. What if we all went back to cooking our own food, making up our own workouts, and defending ourselves in a court situation? What if robots take on all these jobs more efficiently and leave but a limited few programming us into the future? How many kids, plants, pets, and hobbies will we need then to distract ourselves from our mundane existence.

I wish for the world to change, but mine would be too drastic to happen in one hundred years, and when often heard is thought to be a fantasy novel I read. People are caught on the wheel of the familiar and they don’t like to venture far from it, but I imagine a world in which we do — a place where all are free to explore the bounds of their brains. Would this mean more peace and harmony or would the world quickly fall into the hands of a powerful few that would try mass extinctions as shown in the past.

I would rather feel free to love, fight, learn, or perish than to watch an existence of people moping about from their shit pay jobs, to their lie-filled relationships, to their families in prison or the hospital to fund the starving kids in Africa while not giving them a long-term solution, while blowing up other nations for a biased political opinion instead of leaving them to figure it out (even if it does take centuries more), and all while our own children starve or over eat, feel abuse or neglect, and struggle to be creative.

Is the “system” the problem for repression or is that an individual fault? Everyone seems so driven in history to make change and to conquer, but now people are fine with minimum wage and cable television. Would uncontrolled anarchy or freedom of expression come to pass if we were to get rid of some of the systems in place?