crazy

Life is like the virtual reality program. Wake up, go through the motions which doesn’t need much memory, sleepwalk through the day, eat the same food, be with same people, change white color shirt to green, black color shoes to brown – mere tweaks in the massive training data set for a machine learning algorithm. Only clues that this might not be a simulation is probably the jokes made up by friends – looks quite silly out of context, but hilarious within context – could be that the algorithm has gone creative and invented the jokes as clever spice to be added to otherwise boring routine. You try to think outsize the box, you can’t see the box though, how far it extends and make tiny attempts to kick out in attempts to reach the boundaries and make a change. You don’t realize you are tied down though, there is no escape. It is the long reel that needs to run through its course and you need to stay with the sequence.

But once in a while you do something unexpected, something the program didn’t plan for, something done to you out of the blue and the program starts to veer off course. Or you think it is starting to. That is another clever invention – to kick you out of monotony. Then it looks like time slows down, reactions are not scripted, you don’t know what to expect, what next. It is like out of body experience – you see the version of you stumbling along, see the long path ahead of him. But don’t worry when it happens. Just put one step ahead of other, keep moving, it will come back to the groove, everything will get normal back again. It has to.

At all other times there are mechanisms to keep you in check. Fear is one such control mechanism – fear to offend, fear to act out of character lest someone sees, fear of getting hurt. Inertia is another – gives you the comfort of running the course, keeps you warm and safe. This is why no one suddenly starts dancing in middle of the road – and when they do, like in the planned flash mobs, it feels novel. And if someone truly starts dancing, you know he is crazy.