The world is a rotting orchard. One day, it was lush with fruit, vibrant with life. Now, it's just a dry husk, the trees brittle and cracking beneath the weight of their own age. The fruit, once rich and full of promise, has long since spoiled, lying on the ground, forgotten and covered in flies. We walk among it, oblivious to the decay beneath our feet, too busy with the business of pretending it isn't happening.
Suffering is the great constant. It's the thread that weaves every life into the same ragged tapestry. People talk about joy, fleeting and elusive, but what does it matter when the suffering outweighs it? When you step back, look at the world as a whole, the scars are there for all to see, but we choose to ignore them. We look at our phones, we fill our minds with distraction, pretending the wounds aren't festering under the surface.
Think about the countless people who have lived and died before us—born into suffering, only to pass on in more of it. The endless cycle, generation after generation. Born to suffer. Live to suffer. Die in suffering. And what for? What is the point? We are told to rise above it, to persevere, to push through, but what happens after the pushing? We're all just gasping for air, drowning in an ocean of our own misery, pretending that the tide will eventually take us to a shore of peace. But it never does. The waves just keep crashing, harder each time.
You can't escape it. The suffering is the price of being alive. There's no shortcut, no detour. You could be the wealthiest person on earth, sitting in your mansion, surrounded by luxury, and yet, you are not immune. Your pain won't look like the poor man's pain, but it's still there—just a different flavor. A kind of quiet desperation. You lose someone you love, you watch them fade, you watch yourself fade, and you can do nothing. You can't stop time. You can't stop the inevitable. There's always a clock ticking, and with each second that passes, you get closer to the moment where everything slips through your fingers. All the money, all the comfort, all the accolades—none of it will save you from the inevitable.
Think about the people on the streets, the ones you walk past every day, the ones you avoid because their suffering is too raw, too real. Their world is a constant fight for survival, a desperate scramble to keep from being swallowed by the system, by the weight of existence itself. They don't have the luxury of pretending. They know it's all futile, they know life is just a struggle for air, but they keep going because there's nothing else to do. And then, think about the corporate titans who exploit them, the politicians who pander to them, the system that chews everyone up and spits them out. They're all complicit in the same farce, this meaningless charade. It's all smoke and mirrors, an elaborate game where everyone is either playing or getting played, and there's no way to win.
How many people wake up every day, dragging themselves out of bed because they have to, because the bills need paying, because their families need them, because there's no other choice? They don't care about meaning. They don't care about purpose. They just want to survive. And in the end, what do they get? A death that's no different from anyone else's—a quiet, undramatic exit that erases everything they've done. All that effort, all that struggle, just to be forgotten.
And then there are the people who die before they're ready. Those who've suffered too much to keep going. You hear their stories, the pain that led them to the edge, and you think, "Maybe they were right." Maybe they found the peace that no one else can reach, the quiet that comes after everything breaks. We all pretend to be shocked when someone takes their own life, but deep down, we know that it's just another form of escape, another attempt to break free from the chains of suffering. A final act of defiance in a world that never asked for them, never cared for them.
And even after death, the suffering doesn't stop. The world moves on, and the ones left behind feel the weight of absence like a fist pressing down on their chest. The grief, the emptiness, the howling silence—it doesn't go away. It lingers, and it becomes a part of you, a shadow that you can never shake off. It's the price you pay for being alive. You think you're free, but you're just waiting for the next wave to crash over you. The next loss. The next hurt. The next heartbreak.
We sit in our homes, in our cars, in our offices, and we think we've figured it out. We've built lives, built families, built careers. We've learned how to pretend that it doesn't all mean nothing. But it does. And we know it. We feel it in the pit of our stomachs every day, the gnawing emptiness that we try to fill with more stuff, more success, more relationships. But it's never enough. It's never enough because it never meant anything to begin with. All the things we put value in—money, fame, love—are just distractions. The real story is the one that no one talks about, the one we all pretend isn't happening: that we are all dying. Every minute, every second. And we can't stop it.
We are nothing but specks in a cosmic wasteland, trying to make meaning out of something that was never meant to be meaningful. We're here, we suffer, and then we're gone. There's no redemption, no higher purpose. There's only the weight of the world, pressing down on us, always. And what can we do? We carry it. We carry it because what else is there to do? We're stuck in the muck, dragging ourselves through it, trying to make sense of it all.
But in the end, there's only one truth: we all suffer. It's all we know. And it's all we'll ever know.