Human Feature #236

Jared Scharf
2 min readFeb 4, 2021

I’m tired. Mentally.

I think we all are. This article started out with me whining. While I want to, it’s not The Way in this moment. Moaning takes energy. I don’t think this is why I’m at my keyboard.

Truthfully though, I don’t know why I’m here. At my keyboard. I wrote a letter to someone I’ve never met a few days ago, and I was just happy to write again. Maybe it was cathartic. I do like the idea of pen pals (and secretly falling in love and happily ever after but don’t tell anyone that’s my secret fantasy.) Maybe I’m here because this is a digital shout into the void. Or rather, a digital conversation with the void. Good, you?

Life is not neat, man. It doesn’t fit between the lines. It’s like Jesse in the Before Sunrise. “I have problems, but they’re deeper. I’m less insecure, and better equipped to deal with them.” I loved that line, and it resonates. Going deeper into oneself, regardless of how introspective someone is, but just via the passage of time, is a concept that reverberates right now. It’s a current — time is — and lately I feel like all the cells in my body have been fighting it. Beyond my control, beyond my conscious thought, yet I’m still struggling and pushing against It. Dharma.

Is it noble? Is it fruitless? Is peace accepting that I’m always going to fight? That I’m going to rage in my loneliness? Why do my shins feel like they’re fighting time too?

I feel it though, this resistance. It’s a universal truth for me right now, and I honestly don’t know what I’m fighting to preserve. That’s what happens to me in relationships — on some level, I fight for the autonomy of a self that doesn’t exist. and right now my Self is a slow buzz of no, this is not The Way.

I’m not even desiring the past moment where I was able to set this down, although in my memory it was beautiful. Now that I’m writing more, I just am astounded at how automatic my resistance is. Automatic Resistance, like it’s a feature on the wheel of a car:

“It’s a machine-like quality that provides friction between you and life. Safety reasons, of course. Standard modern human feature”

Woof. Fuck you, narrator-salesman.

I’m tired.

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