Alien, All The Time
To be the in the vast ocean of the is the primordial threshold every human longs to become. Albeit sex, religion, race, nationality, culture, and groups exist as diverger, it wasn't enough for us. The original factors felt as if without struggle, undeserving, and eventually worthless because it’s easily acquired through plainly existing, by the law, hereditarily, or by signing up and chiming in.
According to hearsay, or by the spyglasses of the pessimists, we are living in an arbitrary world where every facet of industries encourages being different as if ramifications are not considered when attained.
School and the job market are interconnected chains of businesses. From elementary school through the university, we are pitted against each other in competitions, school organization, grades, even race to reach political diversity. That past struggles manifest in a single virtual paper on LinkedIn or a real-world where we fight for a spot. We are constantly endorsed to have a distinctive Curriculum Vitae so it’ll trump other applicants and then eventually be accepted into the Kafkaesque reality.
“There is a giant ball there. And evil apes. And the evil apes are dukin’ it out on the ball. You’re one of them. It’s basically all just evil apes dukin’ it out on a giant ball…. You can’t even make out that it’s a ball when you’re dukin’ it out. It’s that large… Vying for resources? It’s just a stupid expression you picked up somewhere. The part of the presentation you want to take home is this: you have to beat the other evil apes in the face or you lose.” Limbic System, Disco Elysium 2019
As the children of globalization and the internet, that gravitational pull to be different is growing stronger and larger by the minute. Information is transferred borderless in milliseconds from the Pop Culture king United States to a second-hand phone of a kid in a developing country trying to memorize a TikTok dance just to be featured by their algorithm.
Being different is constantly associated with success too. NBA players are great but Michael Jordan is the greatest. Billionaires work smart but Elon Musk works the smartest. In the shadow of the mundane, like being great and being smart, there were always other distinctive features that make them consequentially more successful, it seems.
Other than success, being different is affiliated with creativity. The more different––weird, gloomy, gay, or any other radical adjectives mouths and fingers can convey––the better. Depth and hurt became byproducts of the distance you create from other people. Family, friends, and God became the facets you kick out so you can be creatively better.
Remember when you talk to that certain person you love or had loved? The shivers on your skin and the heartfelt punctures to your hypothetical heart — it froze you in place, minus the hypothermia. A connection has been created and a bond has been interconnected with two different souls. It seems the communion between two souls is actually possible. But you, as an alien, denies that feeling for years. Love became a warning sign for your escape from that relationship as it is too hard to connect due to its complexity of communication and responsibilities.
The lone wolf is usually coined as an adjective to adhere to loners or people who walked the path alone. Maybe the real connection is only our connection to the invincible God that we cannot proof acting as a test of faith.
The past generation had bestowed and taught many feelings-deterring dogmas. “Feeling is weak. Brains and brawns trumps.” our parents and their parents said. For the male species, it might as well be patriarchal ideals. The tough exterior became a physical frame to your inevitable soft insides. Feelings and connection became a weakness and yet when discovered became the scarce addiction to connect. That is the reason why family and love are viewed as weaknesses in people.
Smoke and mirrors might be the right idiom for our internet personalities. The image of being okay and perfect is also interconnected. Hurt and loss became a rare concept. But when is discovered is a ploy for attention or to gain more followers. Social media, clothes, and skins are imperfect representations of your soft psyche. We live in a self-made lie. A weak illusion spell.
Sadly, we are all that byproduct. We all wanted to be different. And I am one of them. I am that alien and you are too. But we are all trying so hard to be different, the forces of the world are pushing you to be one. To fight it is to fight the older generations and to fight centuries of tenets. Are you ready to wage a guerilla war and create a revolution so small as to change how society works and perceives the human condition?
As victims of baits, we succumb to a victim mentality. We neither fight nor wage war, all we do is stay sullen to the system. If there are inconveniences we say it on our protected Tweets or complain about it, not to spread awareness, but to look aware and critical.
Or worse, we deny people who are different. They are weird, abnormal, and human anomalies in the system. We act as if they’re not one of us. You’re too different.
What is the correct path? Should we stay silent and be okay with stagnancy or should we take arms to change the tides of faith for a better tomorrow that we had limited knowledge upon? Questions after question being asked then testing out and evidently face consequences as consequences will always be the end game of not being pacifists of our own faith.
How can be different so damaging? So being the same isn’t that bad?
Might as well I’ve kicked myself since a long time ago when I started watching things my age doesn’t watch. I join competition that stretches my knowledge as well as created gaps in conversation with people. I drew and wrote, I transferred myself into my own universe that none can enter. I pursue education by escaping my already alienated hometown and entered a world of multicolor of culture and socio-economic background. More and more things made me different and more lonely. And then I came back here.
Sometimes, I lay in a sleepless night, wondering its worthiness. When leaving, I left families, friends, and history to the city. It slowly chips away my association to the things I’ve built then coming back felt like agony. There are old buildings, coffee shops, and friends, but they are all different now. Buildings were ruined and renovated, coffee shops closed and reopens, and friends got married or had moved away. You speak differently, you dress differently, you think differently and that feels lonely.
Like love, it was familiar yet new, I was left stranded in a such familiar and new place in my hometown, friendless and alone. Then I lay again, at night, wondering what are the silver linings or hoping there is one.
Maybe, one silver lining I’ve obtained after the pandemic was; going through everything alone might be the single most empowering thing oneself could give as we attain strength not in numbers but strength from within.
Alas I’m an alien, all the time.
