The Life Metro

If one's typical life journey should see its onset from childhood to teenage (driven by the will of the parents, spent at school, mainly preparing for work), reaching the peak at young manhood/femininity (driven by the will of the self, mostly spent at work), then falling gradually at the middle age (driven by the will of the society, totally spent at work), and finally decaying at the old age (driven by the will of age, spent at home as a consequence of an entire lifetime of work!), so is one's existence based upon work? Do we work for ourselves or for others? And do we exist for ourselves or for others? Or for work?! It captivates you, it identifies you, it feeds you and feeds upon you, and then it dismisses you: from an aim to a responsibility to a duty to a burden to finally a memory.

"I am terribly sorry, but you left us no choice. The final decision has been made, and your services are no longer required." With these cold words Omar left the manager's office, bleeding from the wounds caused by the bullets of words the manager shot at him, shockingly struck by the blinding lightening of astonishment, stunningly startled by the deafening thunder of numbness, caused by words of disrespect, words of underestimation, words of dishonesty, words of disloyalty, words of gossip, words of injustice, words of sympathy, and even words of empathy. And there he is, still standing a couple of steps away from the manager's office, staring at the floor, so quietly, so peacefully, but only from the outside, as from the inside no quietness or peacefulness is involved, but battles of emotions, of thoughts, about the self and about others, about the past and about the present and about the future, about work, about life, and about his whole existence.

Too many emotions to handle, too many thoughts to perceive, too many words to endure, and not too many wafts to breathe: suffocated, strangled. The atmosphere is turning into airless vacuum, places are turning into dark boxes of solitude, and walls are jails of barbed wires, getting closer and closer, till they tear your flesh apart, till they get you totally crushed. And the people, they turn into hollow shadows, with no marked features, no faces, no details, just piles of dust surrounding you, staining you, infecting you till you turn like them. And you, you cry inside in pain, down in the cage of depression, your body responds with weakness, and your mind joins with indolence. Yet, you can feel it all: your lungs are not producing much oxygen, your chest is so contracted, and your heart....well, it is going bloodless! So Omar takes a last look over his office, where a considerable piece of him lies, and he tries to collect that piece with him, yet he cannot, for it is shattered along his other shattered pieces in this ominous place. And he leaves earlier than always, but more painful than ever. And he leaves once and for all.

The way home this day felt different, the metro felt so much crowded than ever, the heat of people's breaths, the smell of people's sweat, the multiple shoulder hits from the passersby, the darkness of that closed underground, all unbearable. And inside the tube he gets. The way home felt so much longer this day: "Everything seems different today. Worse. Much worse! 'And if you were tough and cold-hearted people would abandon you.' Well, physically this is not happening since I am stuck to the flesh of the men next to me in this canned tuna box! And if you were nice and kind people would stab you at the back! And nobody cares! And why should I care anyway that nobody cares?! Everybody uses you; everybody wants a piece of you, and what is dramatic is that you simply give it to them willingly!" The metro stops and the door opens, to unload and load, flesh beside flesh over flesh, and Omar is still inside.

He goes back with the time machine of his mind to the last week in his work, when it all started. It takes only one mistake, one little mistake, the slightest deviation from the road, a single wrong step and you will be exposed to the booby-traps of the enemies of success, and if you are not well prepared, you will fall an easy prey for others' envy and greed. You put your trust on a person you thought you knew well. You believed everything that person says, everything that person does. You believed in the best of him. You saw something in him and ran after it like a little child, till you got captivated. Like a puppet, you got manipulated, you got used, you got played with, and like a puppet, you faced one of two eventual fates: either you got broken and damaged, or you got thrown away. He cannot imagine how naïve he was, how ignorant, how straight and clear, such an idiot! But it is of no use now, isn't it? The anger and frustration and anxiety and disappointment are forming a poisonous aura around Omar, inhaled not only by him, but also by everyone around. Realizing that, he sets the time machine back to the present, at least temporarily. And with this shift in time, another stop comes, another unloading and loading takes place, and in the tuna box remains Omar's status.

You are the hero of your own drama, and you keep on fighting and fighting. And like every hero, there comes a fall. But like every hero, after the fall comes the rise-up. It is a funny feeling to feel so attached to something or someone while you already know that even life is lifeless, so eager for stability while you surely know that change is inevitable, and so depressed about your existence although that very same existence is part of a universal chain of existence that cannot stand without it. Life goes on, and so should you. Another stop comes, along with another unloading and loading, but this time Omar is not there, for it is time to keep going after a long stop, and it is time to really and finally go home.