The final gift, universal tragedy, and a cosmic joke.
Develop a taste for irony if you wish your inner code to coexist with a world that won't always reflect your values. You won't be the first or last one to do this.
If you run from the system, the system will follow. Wherever there is a "you", there's a fragile ecosystem, barely keeping itself from collapsing. If you isolate, you won't escape it. You'll find yourself governing the ruins of the recreated miniature. You'll call it survival, you will call it surrender, you will call it sovereignty. And that's not freedom, that's you guarding the loneliness of the system you wanted to leave behind. Develop a taste for such irony as well.
The system will never directly say you don't matter or are too small to count. But people will. Because they are reminded of it every day, but you must not believe any of that. The indifference of the world is kinship disguised in nonchalance. That's not binding, that's freedom. Concede but still create meaning. Don't numb yourself, keep looking. The system can only fail you on what it falsely promised to deliver. The system will only fail you if its mediocrity results in yours, too. The system will only fail you if you tie your victory to it. The system rewards no one and yet everyone. Develop a taste for such irony. You'll be a loser and a winner at the same time, but with a growing freedom within. Nothing is ever handed to you, but there's nothing you can snatch either. What flows is already yours. What's here already belongs. Making something of what you have is not a compromise. To yearn for another time, place, and peace; that is self-betrayal.
If you ever set out to seek salvation, know that a pleasurable pilgrimage you plan is an escape from the pilgrimage handed to you. Nothing is as sacred as "here," but sacred isn't a cozy comfort. It's a fire that burns to cleanse, burns to forge, and burns to renew.
Respect the wind, the storms, and your role as a mere player. Accept the losses before they even come, and after that, every step is a victory. Be bigger than you have ever been allowed to see yourself as.
Master Irony, Burn Cleanly, Walk Lightly, Stay Yours. Walk the silent, thankless, sacred battle.
It's a rite of passage. The universe has walked through it. Recognize the same in you. Find the thing. The one thing that will always be a visible, continual thread. A thread that continues even when your shadow fades. For me, it's the evidence of a plot, a story, an archetype. It's the realization that no formula will save me; rather, clinging to one will destroy me. For me, it's to learn time and again, to breathe, I must let go. The language of the mystics that finds me in the oddest of the spaces, that's what I live for, another day. I live for the conversations I can have with those who came before me, or be a conversation for those yet to come.Â
The universe holds such irony, and that's how it keeps itself together. Let it live another such plot through you. Only man can embark on such a quest in a universe designed for death, for entropy, where he's striving to live fully. The universe witnesses the irony, respects it, and lets you be God to live such a plot through you. And then? You’ll walk through it all. With the ashes of your former selves, you will arrive—not triumphant, not broken, but bare. If change feels scary, don't halt numerous identities living through you. I carry the scars I collected on the way to coming to terms with such honesty staring back at me. The tired heart that finds itself amid indifference that it ends up having to mirror. With a gentle smile and a resigned rest on my face, I walk yet again, having found a capacity for indifference that I could never imagine would exist in me, I, who with displaced emotions cried to call out the indifference in the world. This time, the indifference found me. They ask me to sit till the mud settles, but the mud sticks. It stays and finds its way around the peripheries of my sight. The same indifference chokes my sight of air, as everything turns dark to match the dark in me. Do I need my sight to see the darkness in me? The deafening silence of the void grows, with a sense of a flower blooming within me. Odd times, odd places, but I stumbled upon it.  I fondly settled for the discovery of my being, that true happiness does exist in me. It’s to be found inside. Yes, I know now—that story of the sages, the twisted parables for that utter realization, and endless sermons. And now I find myself in a tough spot. Oh! It’s a tough spot. The sight’s growing darker, the outside is fading, and I find indifference in me. An indifference, matching the outside. Happiness? Well, indifference beat it. And that's the final gift, universal tragedy and a cosmic joke. Irony, that will never let you walk alone.
