Today's workplace challenge:

Prentend that you are alive, and that you are a human being.  You get bonus points if you can convince yourself that it's actually true.

Difficulty level:  Expert.

There is no world out there.  There is no world in here.  because if there was a world, my heart would be in it.  And my heart is nowhere.

How utterly bogus, he thought.  This bears no resemblance to actually being alive.  It isn't even a good fake.

Well, I suppose it could pass as a cardboard cut-out of a fake, but only if you give it the benefit of the doubt.

Is this a false existence, he wondered, or it just that I'm a false being?

Does it really matter?  In either case, the one true action that's still possible is to stare the world down; to look at it and know what is false.

You cannot expect people to come through for you.  You must manipulate the situation so that they are there for you while remaining where they are.

Sort of like this (ah, Josephine Siao Fongfong, if only the world were that simple!):

Question:  When is a stupid animal not a stupid animal?

Answer:  When a smart animal would do the same stupid things.

Cynics aren't always disappointed idealists.  They can be frustrated opportunists, as well.

The world is no longer young and modern; it is an old man caught up in the debris of age, and even its children have abandoned it.

What Copernicus really said was that this world is not special enough to be a leper colony.

People danced in the streets when they heard the good news, confident at last that their legs wouldn't fall off.  The dancing grew bolder and more ecstastic, until finally all of the great cities of Europe were in flames.

Hi, Piya -- I'm a little late, but I made it.

Is that it, then? No external points of reference? That is a kind of Hell, then -- like autism.

I am merely making sounds inside my head -- sounds which connect with notheing, snounds which refer to nothing but themselves. If this is all that I can do, then I don't even want to try to make sense.

And the worst of it is that this isn't even a philosophical point, or a social statement. It isn't even alienation.

It is simply pathos of a very weak sort.

When you get no response from anyone or anything, it is easy to imagine that you are a throwaway, a discard, nothing at all.

Imagine, then, that you live in a world where nobody but you needs to breathe. You would have to assume that wherever you went, they might not -- and very possibly would not -- have remembered to provide any air.

I can not, he thought, understand these people -- and at this point, I don't even want to. They're just cold and uninteresting.

Just saying that is like admitting defeat, but if I tried to have a conversation with a turnip, I wouldn't get anywhere either, so maybe it's no worse than that.

However that works, though, I need to find people who I do understand -- people who have the same poison running through their veins as I've got in mine.

The universal explanation for one's behavior: because I'm too stupid not to.

Another problem with nowhere:

Any hint of somewhere -- even the slightest -- becomes too filled with significance and emotional energy to bear, and one winds up making an idiot of oneself over trivial matters.

All of which does little more than tell everyone that you are, in fact, nowhere.

The difference between being unspeakable and not worth mentioning is very much like the difference between existence and nonexistence,  And the tragedy of it all is that in both cases, so many people choose the latter.

There is no neutrality in human interactions, because we are not by nature neutral.  everything is acceptance or rejection, hostility or friendliness, contact or isolation, or some point in between those extremes. 

But that point is never neutral.

Caught between nonexistent and not right, on one hand, and not-happening and won't work, on the other.

Stand or fall, exist or don't exist, real or not-real  --  maybe it doesn't make a difference.  Maybe it doesn't matter.  Maybe you just do it anyway, and make it work the best you can, whether or not you're a day late and a dollar short.

There is, perhaps, no greater psychological terror than a cold and unresponsive nothingness.

Smiling boldly and confidently at an empty corridor:  not even a metaphor  --  it's just the way things are.

What sort of fool decides to join the human race at the very moment when everyone else is resigning from it?

But how can one rebel against silence and indifference?

At best, one will merely appear to be a child or a lunatic, angrily attempting to draw attention to oneself.

I understand now that I locate myself in the world only by my emotional connections with other people  --  and if I have no connections, I am nowhere  --  I don't exist.

Therefore I am not anywhere, unless I exist in someone's heart.

Not even God knows my name, he thought.  I don't know what that means, but it sounds good.

Falling from a great height while standing on flat ground.  Not much of a trick, he told himself, but at least I'm good at it.

The dark night of the soul is, I suspect, highly overrated.

"You OK?"

"I'm fine."  Hell hasn't suddenly gotten hotter, has it?  I think I'd notice if it had.

What's the choice?

To eat well by oneself, or to be hungry in good company?

That's not a choice  --  it's a cruel trick.  And the cruelest part is that there are people who imagine that they are happy eating alone.

The difference is this:

One is born into it, and that makes it much more than style, perhaps much more.

Underlying it all, however, there is a common world into which we all are born.

It is hard to say that in a way that sidesteps all sentimentality, but it is best said with no sentimentality at all.

Maybe it really is as simple as this:  "Here  --  we'll put you in the retarded box, and put a sign on you saying 'Beware of the Retard.'  That way, everybody will know who you are."

Welcome to the new world. Just like the old world, only harder.

"Is that what this is?" he wondered, Just one more run through the annealing-oven? Was this one enough, or do I need more?"

A practical question:

If the earth was flat, and you fell off of the edge, how would you get back on?

Or to put it another way, how do you get back from the Phantom Zone?

An even better question:

If you do return from the Phantom Zone, will you remember how to behave in this world?

Welcome to the wrong.

Ah, yes, but perhaps it's a new kind of wrong.

That moment when you discover that the childish and embarrassing things that you thought you were doing inside your head are actually clearly visible to everybody around you.

This isn't life. This is an empty building with people in it.

Ah, what do we know of this foolish universe? We ourselves are the fools.

Welcome to the Kingdom of Infinite Wrong.

Intelligence and grace>>>>>craziness and spite.

The universal language of nothingness.

By convention, we are all distinct individuals.

By convention, we find that convention acceptable.

The first rule of this place is silence.

The second rule of this place is silence.

The third rule of this place is silence.

What is the fourth rule?

The cage is not the jaguar.

The jaguar is not the cage.

Neither heaven nor sky above, neither hell nor earth below.

"Expect?" he thought, "It isn't even a matter of expectation.  I have simply come to the land where there is neither heaven nor sky above, neither hell nor earth below."