Stagging

There was a blankness in the wind. As I processed more than my fair share of current events via social media, suddenly everything stopped making sense. It felt like a warp in time not accounted for. In this space the profoundness of confusion was solidified with intense rationale; comprehensible in a benighted state of being. 

The purgatory like black-hole was the distance between reality and the virtual world where many lost their consciousness to orchestrated lives that catapulted them into a mindset that was unattainable in their true existence. 

Many of us watched as friends and family tried to pull the images posted and groups joined into their "behind closed door" lives. But the reality of their authenticity faded with each post and caption that spoke of a narrative so far away from their own. Even the white lies devastated the natural flow of self-acceptance, dumping mental stability into a state of fragility unlikely to be handled with care.

Algorithms offset daily feedings, leaving` many searching for the flow of validation that used to keep them alive. In today's world, to die virtually threatens a reality that has escaped the foundations of flesh and blood truth,  

Don't ask me how this actually happened, but it was as subtle and powerful as air. Before we knew it, we were no longer looking up or within. We willingly trapped ourselves in vortexes that spun us around in our own falsehood. Not all engulfed, many tethered between the two. The delusion became an internal fight to remain "woke" and "healing".

Our conversations turned into debates that were rhetoric of circumlocution. Indeed pointless because all we had to do was log out and tell ourselves the truth, not saying that we had to accept it all at once. However, that seemed the hardest to do. I wonder why.

The feen for more validation aggressively intensified which brought on the act of staging; complete theatrics, full on performances: crises, terminal illnesses, violent attacks, and even deaths were performed by the "least" of us to the rich and famous. Because we dare not run out of traumas to address.

Some acts devastatingly real, most of them ; all together sad and disturbing to watch human life take on a robotic soul-less form just to feel.. something. To be seen... even if for a just seconds. 

To log off. 

To temporarily or permanently deactivate your account. 

To remove the app from your phone.

To clear the cookies on your computer; 

A simple act of revolutionary freedom. Everyday there is a yearning to not allow anything so intangible to ever hold us hostage; even when permission is given willfully ignorant.

ParKer Bryant