It was Tuesday, the alarm beeped to the distraction between dreams and reality but astonishingly she was all up that day. Maya knew it was the day before 'a once in a year' moment. Her birthday! Sacré bleu! A grand celebration with cakes and people she pondered. It was a predictable predicament for her, nothing idyllic or excited about at all. She could foretell the upcoming day pretty easily; hibernated old friends showing up with encouraging text and wishes, sparkling GIFs , a lot of embarrassing photos along with screenshots were certain to be featured in Instagram stories and unknown faces huddling up in her Facebook timeline. It was an obvious sport for her! Something which was done to restore a dignity to social command.
Stay with me readers! I know she is eccentric and an ungrateful brat, but hold on! Bear with me. Ofcourse, she is a nonreactive bourbon person. But what made her such way? This goes to a time, when her psych was the polar opposite to what is currently now. A little before we were introduced to this seemingly erratic teenager, there hides a persona we can all relate to atleast once in a lifetime.
Maya was a budding teenager in her early 20's, a millennial to sound exact, an 'easy going' person with a notable positive charisma. She was having a hard time after her parent's divorce, which let her positive outlook of life deteriorate. She shared an emotional connection only with her dad but she couldn't meet him so frequent until once in a month when he comes to render alimony. Everytime they met, she was bloomed with happiness, even it was ephemeral. Her dad would gift her his thoughts which were inspiring and many of them comprised with parental advices like “study hard!", “listen to your mother and do what she says!", “you can make through this, I know you can!" and lot more. A brief talk with him can ignite her will for many days and it can be figured out that it will be refueled by her beloved father again when they meet next time. Days passed by and the routine followed nonchalantly, until one day a call at midnight strucked her to the core. It was reported that her dad had a seizure and while collapsing from the inglenook, his head hit on the wooden edge of the armchair giving him a haemorrhage, causing instant death. Maya was distraught, her world came crashing down around her and she was seem losing all her will at once. The only person with whom she shared her feelings was his father and after he was gone, it left a deep groove in her heart. Her mother was snobbish and her husband's death wasn't something at all that could trigger her to be a more responsible and affectionate guardian for her daughter. There has been always a little talk between them, except for needs they both were like strangers living under the same roof for shelter. The enforced camaraderie of her was small and the fact the more she entered into later adolescence, the more she started feeling distanced from them. It was then she realized in an age where information overload has caused the traditional values to be lost and replaced with a discontent of humanity. She was unable to find a silver lining in the reference that no one came or even supported her in the times she needed them the most, she was the one who fillled her old wine anew to the glass with a sense of stronger mental fortitude to sustain but in a cost of losing trust over humanity. For her the world is now inexorably doomed by humanity’s intentional ignorance, futility and greed and as a result she sees no obvious reason in engaging to the traditional pursuits and thus retreats from the society into an apathetic isolation. Maya was born in an era where technology predominantly developed at a rapid rate in an exceptionally small amount of time. The advent of the internet and information has completely changed the way people could experience and comprehend the world. Due to such, Maya was transformed in a so called
“Doomer” from the popular meme culture. A personification of someone who feels a sense of loneliness and alienated from friends and family and is consequently stricken with a deep despair of life through keeps breathing and moves towards their goals but aimlessly. She felt that the attitude of keeping in
touch with people, being dependent for them in adversities was outdated. Back to her birthday, everything was going with her predicted expectations ; greetings
from her friends who only remembers her existence on special occassions , her mother being nice to her just for the blissful sake of her birthday, the photos that will be sticked to others social media stories for twenty four hours and so on but then? It was all back to normal, a daily bleak life where no one seemed to have added a little meaning to her existence and this wasn’t even a matter to be sad to her anymore. From them she grudged in a pessimistic outlook to life rather then accepting that there still good person who values humanity. Maya is someone who gloss over to most of the individuals in this generation, harder to get something off one’s chest but undeniable.
From the above brief encounter of Maya there is a truth that needs to be heard, perhaps she as a “doomer” feels a heightened alienation from the world because the lost human connection and internet compounds the weight of social pressure and a legitimate sense of detachment. However, this experience of alienation and grief is not unnatural nor without value, rather than feeling constantly despair we must learn to walk deliberately through the hurdles of life. To realize that there will be pain and challenges and instead of turning away from them we must lean into them and face them, developing themselves and add personal meaning no
matter how hard it may be. The internet may be of mainstream sophistication to connect the distant ones, but on the other hand like every universal element , it also has its own fundamental pros and cons. It has led our generation fall back on the small sized screens to lost the actual connection between two human beings. When this traditional value loses its identity from our intrinsic sentiments, a “doomer” is born and so in account to add that we must restore the faith in human connections. Because To understand, to pay an mindful listening, inspiring someone and say “they can do it” will not get you famous on internet but It will give someone a hope to rise above to their potentials. Because these are few things that are never outdated in our civilization no matter how far we exceed in technology advancement.
Good one❣️
Beautiful @Arunabh Hazarika