Curiosity: The Biggest Temptation

I’m just recycling old words and memories and phrases and attempting to do something constructive with them. This is not talent of any sort, but only shows off my organisational skills. If you want talent, go to your local strip club and see what woman with C-section scars can do to a pole and how they crumble big men into their most basic form just by using skills of seduction.

I receive compliments but I brush it off as just some kind gesture. Something that someone is just saying to make you feel good about yourself and to make themselves scratch something off their good deed list for the day. If you want to catch my attention and want me to take you seriously, tell me that I’m shit. But don’t just throw it out there like your weak compliments. Fucking mean it.

Tear into me. Attack my character. Give me a fucking reason to keep writing and to work harder at it. If I keep hearing, “oh, that’s great” I’ll just get lazy and stagnate.  My best work comes out in anger and depression. Oh, what a cliché I have become. A struggling depressed wannabe writer. My great work also comes out in love but I doubt a stranger over the internet could drive me to such a disease. Don’t get me wrong, Love is the greatest thing on this whole planet. To love someone with your whole heart and to know that they love you back is amazing on so many levels. But I do not have a good track record in that department and it’s not the way I wanted it.

I know I sound jaded. But it’s only because I am. Because seldom in my 26 years has life been kind to me. I know there are people who have gone through much more than me but everyone handles situations and hardships differently. And to be honest, most of the shit that happened in my life was brought on by me. That’s the biggest reason why I am so jaded. Because I loathe myself. Because I actually kind of know my potential but I’m a constant victim of what ifs and why bothers.

So come and tell me how worthless you think I am and why I should just quit now because this is not writing. What in all of what you just read screams talent? What in everything you just read stirred up any sense of emotion in you? This is nothing but a stupid childish rant of somebody struggling to come to terms with the hand he was dealt and asking you to attack him so that he can sink even deeper into depression. I can’t even get a decent point across. So do yourself a favour and stop reading this. If you were really smart you would’ve stopped at the stripper part.

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But curiosity is our biggest temptation. Not drugs or sex or love. Curiosity. Curiosity might have killed the cat but it feeds our minds. We hang on for a few more minutes to find out what happened or what will happen. We want to be informed. We want to witness things and feed off of others actions and misfortunes. I even mute the sound of my TV when I hear our neighbours going at it for the millionth time but even that has become a bore.

A perfect example is a car accident at the side of the road. You cannot help but look at the damage of when an impossible force meets an immovable object or when two impossible forces meet each other head on. And to see what emotions, seeing some unfortunate soul covered in a silver foil blanket, brings out in us. Mostly it’s a little bit of empathy followed by hunger or something because you saw a KFC billboard a few meters further and decided that’s what you’re craving and will get for dinner tonight.

You’ll just later retell the story to friends and pretend that it was horrible. Or the Pistorius trial. We want the gruesome details. We sit and watch for hours, almost succumbing to boredom just to know what happened or what will happen. Waiting for him to scream like a girl. Or social networks, feeding off of information of your friends, bands or just random people you follow on twitter that look interesting. This is basically the same.

This whole piece is that accident and I am the victim covered in a silver foil blanket. But you can’t just look away because curiosity. But are you going to do anything about it? No. You’ll probably just ignore this or later tell your friends about the biggest piece of shit you read since Jacob Zumas speech (pick any one of them).

Apathy is everywhere. At the streetlights, when everyone sitting in their cars ignore the beggar crawling on his knees on the hot tar road begging for a few Rand so that he can afford some bread, glue and beer. “He should just get a job”, they say. I was unemployed for almost a year and a half. How the hell will a young black man get a job if I couldn’t? I had to clean swimming pools, watch peoples animals, wash jumping castles for some money. And I’m white. What chance would he stand?

Another drug to us humans is validation. We want to be accepted. Even if you are anti-everything and don’t want to be accepted by society you are somehow working very hard for validation among the people who feel the same as you. We tweet the most idiotic things. Quotes, lame jokes, haikus and just stupid opinions in the hope for a “fav” as though were back in 1^st grade where we would do what the teacher told us in the hope of getting a fucking gold star. Or a retweet so that more people can bask in the glory of your unbelievable and glorious wit.

And I am just as guilty as everyone else. I have over 9000 tweets to prove that. Now I’m trying something different. Trying to hopefully reach my goal of putting something out that people might enjoy reading or getting hired by a mediocre magazine that needs someone to write shit like this on a weekly basis. This is already a good first step. Writing for a popular blog like Running Wolf’s Rant could be the stepping stone to something bigger for me. I don’t know yet if I’m capable of something like this or would even last a few weeks but I’m trying.

I wanted to write something of a thousand words and I struggled to find something to reach that target. Yes, you wasted about 2 minutes of your time reading a thousand words of absolute drivel. But I want to see what I could do. Curiosity once again. I don’t want to give in to what ifs or why bothers anymore. I want to witness my full potential. But like the great Dylan Moran once said “Don’t do it! Stay away from your potential. You’ll mess it up, its potential, leave it. Anyway, it’s like your bank balance – you always have a lot less than you think.”

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Watch this space for regular updates in the Opinion category on Running Wolf’s Rant.

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Gareth Davies

Pretorian. Wordsmith. Curious Creature.