School wipes me out. At the end of the day I come back to my room and literally collapse. The more I sit in class and listen to my profs babble on about their respective (boring) subjects, the more I wonder WHY I’m in college at all, and how any of it is going to help me in the long run. Oh sure, getting a job would be nice…but that can’t be all there is to it, is there? Seems an awful waste of time just for a little slip of paper that says that I’ve expanded my mind sufficiently to become a slave to society’s machine.

I’ve come to believe that we CAN’T consciously change who we are: we can only change our behaviors, and that is a completely different thing. If we could change truly change people, why would we not take all the pedophiles and rapists and fascist dictators and make them into law-abiding citizens? We obviously can’t do that, and so the field of psychiatry is largely concerned with using drugs and mind games to trick us into behaving in ways society deems acceptable; and yet, how many people, even with extensive therapy, are still depressed, tired, and plagued by the same problems that they were trying to resolve in the first place?

That’s another thing: I find it difficult to believe that millions of years of evolution has led to a human species where some insanely huge number of beings suffer chemical imbalances of the brain. Is it possible that humans are just meant to be generally miserable? Is it possible that we’re just not hard-wired for happiness all the time, and that we’d do well to accept that and try to get along as best we can; is it possible that modern society is incompatible with how we are built as a species and that every step forward in human achievement causes us more agony and pain? Buddhism teaches that desire is the root of all suffering, and that to eliminate desire will eliminate suffering. But is that really possible? Can we truly rid ourselves of our desires, or can we only bury them?

I suppose all of this relates to my current apathy regarding my classes, my future, etc. I wake up every morning and ask myself, what’s the point? Why am I here? How is this making my life better? And what is my contribution to the rest of the world? I can’t give good answers to those questions. But, I feel like I’m squandering precious time around here.

I’m sick of the treadmill. I want off.