This piece was last edited in the fall of 2022, nestled somewhere in the hundreds of pinned notes on my phone. I have pinned so many notes the pinning has lost all functionality. I found this by accident, and I thought: yep, I sound like a pirate sometimes, but, still feeling this. There was just one gap in the flow which I stitched together with a line about the reason for these words hiding in the digital dungeon of forgotten notes for so long…
Everything is bullshit to me
It’s like I’m half-plugged in and the screen is glitching so much I can’t immerse myself in the story
I read articles and advertisements from yet another person thinking they can beat the system by selling me a subscription to their 5 week self-help affirmation-station-program and I want to scream
And I do
I say OHFUCKOFF to the screen
Nobody needs that!
Nobody
It’s all desperate attempts at surviving late stage capitalism with some extra cash in pocket
When we actually need a radical revolution and overhaul of our entire way of living
We need to fry our brains free from the conditioned delusions around what it means to live together on this majestic planet
Everything you believe around
A
B
S
O
L
U
T
E
L
Y
E
V
E
R
Y
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H
I
N
G
All of it in the blender and fried to a crispy crystal clarity
But instead we try another mindfulness e-book with ideas that are just watered down extractions ripped from an ancient Buddhist text
Empty and acontextual and ignoring the fact that our whole system is collapsing causing everyone to feel unstable and burned-out and you can’t fix that with 5 minutes of guided meditation before another insomaniacal night
That’s right, I’m angry. Been angry for as long as I can remember at the half-baked nonsense we are sold as truth© (“this message is brought to you by an entirely corrupt white-collar-criminal business that cares only for its own megalomaniacal $growth$ trajectory”)
And how millions upon millions of people just continue to tryyyy and believe it
“Just the way it is”
“Oh well”
“That’s just the way it is”
No – it’s not just the way it is
What type of escapist and unaffordable retreat has your divine agency fled to?
It’s just the way we created it to be
This > Soil and Soul destroying absurdist psychosis-inducing bureaucratic death machine <
Is. Our. Invention.
Affirm: I love myself and I am complicit in perpetuating a failing system that kills and makes people ill and destroys the planet
No need to get defensive about it, we are all in this together, and we don’t know what to do except maybe
Stir some shit up!
Say NO
Be NON-NICE
Unpleasant
Unlikable
Uncomfortable even
Be honest
And by all means necessary
Crack your brain all the way open, glitch out, fry up, spinn off your axis
Don’t repeat the same thing over and over expecting a different result, we all know by now Albert said that’s the definition of insanity
Do you know that picture of him wild haired, big eyed with his tongue sticking out? Like that
Give me recalcitrant non-compliance in the face of outdated nonsensical and shame-driven norms
Normality™ is a capitalist distortion of reality
A ploy
An insidious brainwash soap bar that removes all the protective natural oil from your psyche until it’s so squeaky clean you can barely even recognize yourself
Making everyfckingbody think something is wrong with them
Is there something wrong with me? While I carefully consider the possibility from every angle in a variety of individualized therapies, I will keep these words to myself for years because I’ve been educated to obey the cynical little white man censor in our hivemind saying things like: “too much,” “unkind,” “not scientific enough,” “too emotional,” “not spiritual enough,” “unprofessional,” “not nuanced enough,” “too complicated,” “self-indulgent,” “immature,” “unrealistic,” “offensive,” “and, eeergh, evidently… entirely hypocritical”
Oh, God forbid we hurt anybody’s feelings but our own
There is nothing wrong with me. My Spirit is a messy divergent and sensitive wilderness. There’s nothing wrong with you. You are a human Being
We’ve never meshed well with the overculture that would give our true selves a plethora of pathologies if we would allow it. I am not sick. To the contrary. And I am not interested in submerging myself in the stagnant waters of victimhood, diminishing ourselves in conflict avoiding and *alwaystriggered* unresolved traumas
Tired
Done
Enough
That pain underneath is serious, just never a justification for inaction, passivity, or half-living
Accept my compassion for your suffering
Do not expect me to drown in it with you
That’s not what Love does
Give me, instead, the untamed madness that lives in the center of your heartfire and let me hear your soundwaves crashing into the shores of this godforsaken empire of denial
We need you at the helm of this ship
Roaring so crazy and wild we all end up belly-laughing on the floor because it’s so true and pure
And, holy shit, it’s actually real for once
Yvet Youssef 