Programmed

   I’ve had many sleepless nights where I sat up and wondered, “What is life?", "Where do I belong in this dark place?" and "Do I even have a place?”. I take these thoughts into the day. Today I sat near a busy street in the city. Things seem to look the same from city to city here and abroad. I sat there motionless, watching the people move, oblivious to anything but themselves. They looked like robots following a program. They walked by the homeless as if invisible. A middle-aged woman sitting up against a wall with a sign that read, “I lost my job and my family is on the street   food, water, or anything.. HELP” went unnoticed. 

  The robots continued to move at a seemingly predetermined pace. Everyone once in a while a   robot running late would push and bump its way through the other robots disrupting the assembly line. Faces would frown and gestures would be made but just as fast as the disruption occurred the line would go back to normal.
 
  I fade back to my thoughts... I couldn’t tell if I was like my mother or father. They were both scholars and educators by profession. Both of my sisters excelled in academics. I on the other hand, am not a product of this academic environment. I was happy with a C average.  Yet, I was nothing close to average because I was always into different shit. I always knew, without question, that there were, are and will be great and wondrous trials for me to overcome. The path I walked had curves where it was straight for others. I stood out even when I wanted to blend in.
 
  In all my years, I always found myself blessed with having beautiful people in my life no matter the length of time. Each one of them brought light to my dark place called life. Each step of the way, they helped me evolve, learn, and continue to understand there is no purpose. How each of us are bound by invisible chains, closed in by imaginary walls that are real to us.
 
   Yet, it occurred to me that no matter who was around or how many people I came in contact with, I remained a loner. I worked in silence most of the time, interacting with friends and having relationships mostly built on something fragile. To my own fault, most of them were seasonal. Just like then, I still find myself in solitude, at times a self-imposed exile that has become my way.
 
   If and when you see me doing things differently from the group, go ahead and judge me harshly. Its the installed program you accepted to despise the beauty of uniqueness. We have all accepted some form of the program that keeps us bumping into one another operating in a subset of conditions. Humanity has built and passed down year after year an environment that keeps us focus on distractions and sedated by false hope. We have all invested so much of ourselves in the idea of success trapped in a cycle of consumerism.
 
So much of our lives lost in the pointless search for purpose or meaning not allowing ourselves to just live.