The sun is already shining up in the clear, blue sky as you wake up at 8 in the morning. The first thing you notice is that you don’t hear the songs of the birds or the rustle of the trees. You’re still a bit groggy from the activities that you did the night before.
Instead, you hear cars honking and trucks rumbling outside. You rise from your bed and fix it. You don’t want to stand up. You still want to sleep, but you know that you need to have a life today.
You know for a fact that you have a somewhat good life, even though you’re living in the big, messy maze that they call a city. If you’re unlucky enough to live far away from your workplace, you need to rise and shine before the sun rises in the east. But then, you’re lucky enough to live in a shared apartment with your friends – despite the fact that the four of you are paying a good amount of money for it. Well, that included all of the bills, expenses and other baggage that comes with living somewhere decent. You’re also lucky enough to have the same group of friends since college.
Despite all of the bad news that defined today’s news, you still notice see the uplifting stories, such as a kid raising money for a climate change foundation, a 16-year old teenager being able to finish her Ph. D. at a prestigious European university and an adult saving a stranger from a raging conflagration at a slum area, among others. It is as if social media knows how to break you down, to make you think and to build you up into a different person. You utter a word of thanks.
Afterwards, it dawns upon you that it is a typical Monday. You realize that you are about to offer 40 hours of your measly life to the exercise in frustration that they call work. But then, you and your family need the money. Then, there’s the fact that you need to start saving for your wedding – hey, your fiancée and future wife deserves a ceremony that you’ll both remember for the rest of your lives, no?
You arrive at your 6th floor office. While it’s not as fabulous as the other offices out there, at least you have the trappings of a modern one: It has a state-of-the-art gym, a lounge-slash-pantry where one can grab unlimited snacks and cold drinks, a coffee machine that beats Starbucks’ very own, a tea maker, two arcade machines with the “999-in-1” discs on them and a couple of massage chairs.
“Good morning Luis!” greets one of your female colleagues. You greet back. She smiles and goes on her way. She’s a worker from another department.
These are the small things that remind you that you are alive. These are the small gestures that make your workday a bit more…before you dive into work.
You look at your quota for today. You breathe a sigh of relief.
You only need to do some marketing copy for this day. At least, you’re lucky not to have that much…but then you remembered your horror days at the start of your career.
You are able to finish most of your workload before lunch at 1 p.m. You go out of the office and grab some lunch. You eat the food with gusto.
Once you’re back at work, you finish the rest of your tasks for the day and shut down your workstation at 4:30 in the afternoon. You are not yet allowed to log out of the office; thus, you grab a couple of snacks at the lounge to relax yourself. You are thankful that you survived that day.
That’s when you realize that you missed your hometown, where you could get mangoes, bananas and other fruits from your neighbors for free and lead a life with less. Your mouth salivates as you picture that memory in the deepest recesses of your mind.
After a 25-minute walk, you’re home. Your friends aren’t around; they will come home later in the evening.
You look around your room once again. That’s when you realize the details of the place that you’ve been staying for the last five years.
It is simple, with a bed, a wooden table that has a drawer for your important documents, a cabinet. While the room is relatively small, at least you don’t share the space with someone else. Not that it mattered though: You are living with many of your closest friends, with whom you would have shared the place without hesitation.
Since your friends would want a quick bite, you decide to cook steamed rice on a rice cooker and fry some hotdogs for them to eat. There’s always soy sauce and banana ketchup to add taste to the humble meal.
After cooking and saying grace, you start eating quickly while watching cat videos and railway documentaries on YouTube. You imagine your fiancée’s face as she smiles at the great sights on the train. Then, you recall your vow not to spend too much time on social media and close YouTube in order to read a couple of pages from Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons.
Finally, you play a bit. You love the fast-paced action of Call of Duty: Mobile; you are having a great game with your online acquaintances. After five matches, you bid farewell to them and start to charge your phone.
With a tired sigh, you finally close the lights. Before sleeping, you thank the Almighty for everything good that has happened today. It’s not easy to be thankful at all, but you know that life is a blessing in itself.
You close your eyes and let you soul travel to the realm of dreams, where it can refresh itself before facing another day in this waiting shed they call Earth.
