A complete view of my life situation, written on October 25, 2024.
My day was terrible. I was perfectly productive yesterday but today the pendulum swinged the opposite way and made me extremely unproductive. I attended two face to face classes but there was no classes at all, neither is there any announcements about it. I didn't get to take a proper morning nap and afternoon nap, making me feel highly irritable. Therefore, I continued binge reading manhuas and playing games until I had enough, and decided to fix my life right then and there. Thus, I meditated inside the rickshaw at evening, without caring about anyone who might see me.
I believe that everyone has some form of imagery of how they see themselves in connection with their life situation. This realistic psychic imagery is a psychological imagery that sums up everything about their thoughts, beliefs, and plans about their current situation. Once again, I am forced to look within.
There I found myself in an underground dungeon. At the end of a dark and long hallway, I saw a child, battered, bruised, and malnourished, hanging on the wall. The limbs of the child are all stretched and chained to the wall diagonally. His head seems to be looking down, dejected. Something seems to be placed on his mouth preventing him from saying anything. However, his eyes is somehow still facing forward, burning with an intimidating intensity. It's as if there's a fire that grows stronger the more nothingness and darkness it devours, and that fire is contained within his very eyes.
A long time has already passed and the chains confining his limbs to the wall seems to have worn out. In fact, he can now escape this dungeon whenever he want. However, by remaining in this dungeon, he is constantly being kept alive by his captors, giving him food, water, and medicine from time to time to prevent him from dying. He knew that if he tried to escape and leave this dark dungeon, he does not know where to go, neither does he know where the exit is. Even if he managed to escape, there is no assurance that he will find some food to eat and water to drink. Thus, he felt that there is no choice for him but to do nothing and wait, for he knew that time has a way of ensuring that all buildings and people will eventually collapse.
Then I'm transported to a prison. An old soldier, full of scars, seems to be imprisoned in one of the cells. Although the security is lax and the guards are few, he dares not to escape the prison. After all, the guards and his fellow inmates have repeatedly talked about a vast desert outside this prison and anyone who tries to escape will never be able to cross this desert. This same old story, has been told countless of times by both inmates and prison guards everyday ever since he has arrived at the prison. Even though he has not seen the outside of the prison, he has given up all hopes in escaping. For him, there's nothing else to life but to stare at the ceiling, look at the spaces between the prison bars, while eating and sleeping from time to time. Still, he is hopeful that death will eventually come to free him from this place.
Surely, there must have been other ways to escape than to helplessly wait for a miracle to come. Thinking about it, there seems to be four ways to escape from this confinement and get the necessary resources to keep on living: lemonization, asking for help, running away, and transcendence. As someone who used to be the lemon god (and still is), my first instinct is to use lemonic abilities to lemonize people, influencing them with lemonic energy so they will do whatever I want. But that sounds so boring and lame, it feels like cheating to use such otherworldly abilities. To be honest, I haven't tried using them before so I don't really know how to control this kind of power. Most importantly, as the most passionate advocate of freedom, what I hate the most is people using their power to influence people and force them to do things. Even if I were to use this power on strangers in far places, I fear that the effects may be so potent that the butterfly will follow me all the way home. As much as possible, I want to refrain from using this edgy power.
Waiting for the confinement to end doesn't seem to be a bad idea, especially when you consider that I only have to be confined for a few more years. But that is exactly why I'm feeling more anxious and eager to leave — I do not want to default on life and fail on the most basic first part of the main story: "Free yourself". If I fail at this simplest task, how can I ever become an emperor of freedom? How can I face myself in the mirror for the rest of my life?! There's no chance I can become a main character if I can't even so this, not to mention becoming an emperor. I have no right to teach and preach about freedom if I do nothing and rely on the passage of time to be free. Most importantly, I do not want to become like other people who only waits for miracles and blindly believes in the supremacy of the majority. Ever since I was a child, I have gritted my teeth everyday with only three thoughts in mind: to survive no matter what, to not become like them, and to change the world.
Therefore, the most desperate last resort would be running away and escaping the dungeon without looking back. Although this will allow me to be free, it will not guarantee my survival and comfort afterwards. It is a dangerous gamble that should only be tried once all other methods have been exhausted. It is a bad choice but it is still in my list of choices. After all, even a bad decision is better than having no decision at all.
I know full well that the best decision here, the best way to clear this mission is the way of transcendence. This means befriending all my captors and taking control of the entire dungeon. This method will give me the most resources and highest amount of points. However, I am sad to say that I am neither a saint nor do I have the social tolerance necessary to help annoying people whose sole existence is to enslave or annoy me for their own benefits. I do not bite the hands that feed me but I also do not extend my hand to the hands that confined me. I know it sounds immature but I can't help but see annoying people as annoying people, even if I can clearly see the psychological and sociocultural circumstances that influenced them to be like that.
In the end, the only method I can try is asking for help, especially in the internet. It's annoying as well but it's not as difficult as transcendence nor as lame as lemonization though it might be less effective than them. If this succeeds, at the very least I don't have to use my lemonic abilities or run away to nowhere. I tried thinking of other methods aside from these ones but I can't think of anything else other than some variations of these methods. I think this is already exhaustive.
For some reason, I feel like I have written this kind of article before, though it's not as detailed or complete as this one. Ah it's been a while since I wrote an article over a thousand words, it feels great.