The rebellion of a quiet life

There is something humanistic about our lifelong journey to find value in our existence, to derive purpose from our education and career. We place meaning on virtually everything, desperate to find worth that will span our temporal range. We measure that worth in many ways, through titles and achievements, and the different scopes of our performances. We esteem success, and even that looks distinct for every person. Success in financial merits, success in happiness levels, success in the number of marathons run, success in the number of books read, success in the number of lovers had, success in our worldly experiences. The pervasive myth of what is held in a meaningful life demands endless toil, demands we keep searching in a way that will leave us haunted, a fear that we will never feel truly and deeply fulfilled. 

It’s not our fault, though. At least, it’s not all of our faults. This Sisyphean nature of the human condition is perpetually fed to us and has grown more rampant since the inundation of social media and technology in our daily routines. The narrative of hustle culture is ingrained in our mindsets from our algorithms, even in the simplicity of the way our feeds operate, a constant feedback loop that you can never scroll to the end of. How do we even reckon with the Orwellian design of our favorite apps, where even the CEO of Spotify has said himself that its biggest competitor is sleep? The greatest competitor for our most-used apps and media consumption isn’t our productivity or even our self-discipline; it’s sleep. The only time we can fully shut out the cacophony of online chatter is when we are literally unconscious. Part of our addiction to consumption is an attempt to find an escape into an alternate reality, immersing ourselves in shows or games; other times, it's the soul-sucking effects of capitalism, the grotesque amount of run-don’t-walk Amazon hauls. 

However you measure your inherent value in life, it always boils down to the notion of not enough. There is always more we can achieve, always more money to be made, always more that we can do. We are Sisyphus, tirelessly rolling the boulder up the hill of life. But this falsified glorification of the summit has left us efforts that feel futile. The promotions, the wealth, and our well-deserved accolades will never be enough because the summit is a moving target. Once we reach one peak, we will always see a higher mountain in the distance, an ambition we have not yet attained. So we labor on, we climb until our bones wear thin and the soles of our shoes corrode to dust and we are left with scarred feet and a trail of blood, a reminder of all we have done and all we have not yet achieved.

I do not want to indulge in a life where the chronically online lexicon bleeds into my everyday language. I do not want to accept a society where we whittle art and prose down to acronyms, where critical thinking takes a backseat to artificially generated ideas, and suddenly everyone sounds the same. Am I being too loud, or is everyone monotone now? They take on the voices of robots, static filling in the silences between sentences and during conversations. I do not know who I am speaking to anymore. 

How do we live in this world where everything is too much? How do we rebel against this noisy existence where we are put on display like marionettes, strings pulled by expectations, by obligations, and by invisible digital demands? It is not easy to put up resistance to the volatility of modern life when it is all we know. How do you live your life in a way that you have no concept of? How do you shift the experiences of your temporal range to serve you, not the opinions online that simply do not give a fuck about you? How do you live a life composed, not performed? A life that moves with intention, with grace and depth? 

This sort of existence is not a new or profound pursuit. Far from it, to be frank. It has prevailed since the first person on Earth sought to find meaning in survival. To live a more ethical life, so to speak, is to live inwardly. We must focus on the journey of rolling the boulder on the mountain, not the peak itself. It’s finding satisfaction in depth over spectacle, consciously making decisions that align with our morals rather than the optics of how it may look to the external world. Are you living for yourself, or the image of yourself that you want to project? What do you like? Who are you to yourself? And not the version that you curate for your followers and strangers on the train? The hamster wheel of life is exhausting, but it doesn’t have to be. It’s not easy to deviate from the only path you have known, but it is a choice worth making.

I am still trying to find the balance of living a life where ambition and simplicity both exist. But I am trying to live a quiet life in an act of defiance, valuing presence over productivity, cultivating hobbies, and pursuing passions because it gratifies me, not an audience. I am trying to push myself to think more deeply, participating in nuanced discourse, prioritizing the expansion of my intelligence. I can still find fulfillment in my tangible achievements, being proud of numeric successes, but also understanding that there is more to my life than those metrics. My life is rooted in meaning, no matter how small or unseen. By staying faithful to this truth, I hold a power that outlasts fleeting and artificial validation. 

I am rebelling with a quiet life. I am creating a legacy of presence, of purpose, of stillness and simplicity in a world that is endlessly demanding more.