I exist because of the mistakes of others, my life is an empty shell shuffled from one hollow task to the next, feeding the engine that is my body simply to remain alive and feed it the next day.
I am not “lost” or “bereft of purpose” but rather I have concluded that my purpose is insubstantial. That the purpose I serve is merely to continue under any cost, to remain trudging forward as days blend into weeks and months and years until I cannot take another step, or pump another breath.
The purpose of life is to sustain life, the purpose of humanity is to watch the next generation grow into something we can look upon with pride knowing that their children will be in safer hands than our children were and their children after that. But what becomes of a machine with no purpose when it becomes self-sustaining? It must break down eventually simply for a lack of reasons to carry forward, grinding itself to dust in the lazy apocalypse of ticking gears, finally slowing to a stop as its lack of purpose and drive becomes apparent.
I am merely amongst the first of these cogs to give in to my own pointlessness. Older cogs that have spun for years in and out have worn down into the shape demanded by the machine, battered into form by those around them into a broken conformity, but without the odd shape of these gears that would handle the stresses and strains of this machine of humanity I am left to be beaten and battered anew, just as the cog before me, and mocked for my inability to withstand the relentless pain that everyone assured me is necessary. The slot that I fill and that will be filled after me when I die is ready to beat me into submission, into my vital slot in the pointless machine.
But a new cog is not so soft and malleable, ready to be worked into shape and place, and the systems that were meant to create my initial form have long since begun to wear down. I could choose to bend to the will of the pointless machine, moving on as humanity intended me to or I could remain myself and be battered until I break and cast aside in favor of cogs more eager to please.
My choices are conformity or destruction.