Exit the loop! is a short story written by Sourodip Ghoshdastidar and shared with The Ugly Writers under the theme Contrition for the month of August

Exit the loop!

We are too caught up in the trivialities of the world and our survival, that we forget to cherish the good things and memories of happy events that have happened to us, and continue to pine for “another new good experience “.

Maybe they’re gone, but what you’re wishing for in the future, will be gone too, will become the past. Seeing that, is the relentless search for good memories too much? Because they will be the past someday! Maybe spontaneity and openness towards experiences will be good enough! Because getting too caught up in pursuing good memories leaves you with a bad taste when you don’t get it quickly. Even if you do get something good, you forget to pay attention and the search goes on.

Return to the days when you felt life was an open slate and not an optimization algorithm with a badly behaving cost function.

Don’t try to optimize

Let life flow through as if every day is new, not some ‘I have to do this, that, etc’ and getting caught in targets and missing the whole journey called life. Because we are living in survival mode: in survival mode our minds are absolutely alert and have only one objective: to protect ourselves from getting killed. And all your body’s resources are diverted to that objective. All else is shut down. That’s why one is unable to enjoy life: everything else gets shut down and the only objective is getting happy or whatever you desire. That’s why your brain stops working in these cases, cause you’re so focused on getting happy that you forget to feel the happy moments of life as it goes by. That leads to even less happiness and more and more survival mode. That’s an endless loop with real unhappiness.

Exit the loop.

Set yourself free.

Please support Sourodip Ghoshdastidar by reading his previous entries at The Ugly Writers: