Why Life Is a Scam

(Or So I Thought)

Life is miserable.

So very miserable that even babies cry when they realise they need to live now. You cry when you’re hungry and then you cry when you eat a little too much. You cry when you want something, and you cry when you don’t like what you have. You cry and cry until you turn 9 and your little sibling does the same thing, but you can’t. Why? Because now you’re a big kid. Big girls don’t cry. Boys don’t cry. Nobody cries. Do people just stop crying, or just forget how to cry?

Life is a lie.

Education, career, dreams, and hopes—they’re all nothing but pretty lies. Study hard and get a good percentage. Work hard and land a good job. Just get married and you’ll finally be happy. Just one child and then maybe your life will make sense. There’s nothing but lies that you’ve been fed, and you feed to your kids, and their kids, and we’re all in this mess together until one of us snaps like a madwoman and posts this rant on Substack like a thousand others haven’t already.

Life is a game.

From the very first word you spoke, to the last thing you watched at the theatres—everything is a game. Everything you do is watched, and people judge you for the slightest of things. From clothing, to the little sipper in your hands—Big Brother is watching, my friend. And the worst part is—you learn to play. You learn which version of yourself gets the most approval, which words sound the nicest, which opinions are safe enough to say out loud. You learn when to laugh, when to stay quiet, when to pretend you didn’t hear something that hurt.

Life is exhausting.

Like the way you’re sleep deprived after a tiring day at school and cram school, but you cannot sleep because you haven’t done 3 hours of self-study yet. You keep waiting and waiting for some roller coaster, some peak to hit you—only to realise there’s no peak and only valleys in life. You live, live, live, and then you die knowing that you forgot to live, and only merely existed. Existence is exhausting. Showing up is exhausting. And dealing with idiots along the way is worse.

Life is contradictory.
You say you hate school but you attend it anyway because you really want to be a part of the inter-school band competition next month. You bunk lectures and spend time on stairs with your friends, with your bruised-up guitar and quiet escapades. You say you hate hanging out with people and socialising, but the truth is that you’re scared of being alone. You just want to be wanted by the people you want. You don’t want to feel desperate to be friends with your friends.
The day went terrible today—maybe your boss snapped at you, maybe you misspoke at a really important event, or that you stuttered in front of the guy you really, really liked—but hey, your mom made your favourite shake, and your dad got you ice cream, and your dog runs towards the door at the slightest bell because it thinks you’ve arrived.

Life is flowers and ice-creams.

It was windy today—not in a ruin-your-hair kind of windy, but rather the one that softly touches your curls as you move across. A random flower falls on you from the tree above. A little kid walking next to you picks it up and gives it to you. You don’t know the flower’s name, you don’t care for it, but it’s beautiful—and frankly, the best gift ever. The kid walks off happily, eating away his melting ice cream. Or frozen dessert. You don’t really want to think about food adulteration today.

Life is your mother’s lap and your father’s shoulders.

It’s a quiet Thursday evening in your 1 BHK apartment that you rented from the salary you get. You go through the photo album that keeps all your childhood within itself. You close your eyes and you see it. Your mom drawing poorly shaped mangoes as she tells you to colour them. You don’t wish to study, so you go and lie your head down on her knee. She doesn’t bother arguing either. Your father hums his favourite song—now yours too—to put you to sleep. You wonder why you never see him sad, but it’s okay. You idolise him, and you want to be like him. You want to be dependable, because after all, you’re your father’s child.

Maybe… Life isn’t so bad.
There are miserable moments. When life feels like a lie, and everything in your life plays out as if it were a part of a mere game. It gets exhausting too. But that’s the beauty of it, isn’t it? If everything was sunshine and rainbows—would you even care for it? What is a rainbow without the rain? What is life without a little pain? Life gets hard, gets easy, and then gets so hard that it slaps and sends you flying across the room. The point of life is to get up and get slapped again. Sitting there in the corner will only bind you to shackles. Live. There’s only one shot at this.
You can either cry, be miserable about it, and live in regret.
Or… you can cry, be miserable about it, and live with the resolution that you didn’t just exist. You loved, and you lived.

And that? That is enough.