Oliver Freyermuth
5 min read

We’re worn down in our everyday lives, little by little. A stone in the river becomes nice and smooth, but the current can carry it away. It can’t stop or endure the pull anymore. But then we’re used to it, and even if we look for excitement, we end up missing everything.

Isuna Hasekura — Spice and Wolf, Vol. 18: Spring Log

Struggling helplessly in the daily hustle and bustle. Switching from one call to another, one mail to the next, drowning, not finishing before the next task arrives. Losing focus, losing energy, losing the dream; forgetting the pursuit of happiness. How to escape?


We’ve chosen our places to be, our tasks to do. Guided by our thirst to achieve happiness, to fulfil our dream. But then, daily routine rushes in, a roaring tide mercilessly crushing the ideals. Drowning, nostalgia envelopes us: What did we come here for? Silently, the dream is remembered, how it all began: Freedom, time to pursuit the goals and shut out any external interference. Time to think and proceed efficiently, without interruption, without switching contexts for every single annoyance arriving in the inbox of terror. Why did it change? When did it happen?


Our world rotates on and on, flying through the solar system at breakneck speed, ignoring all the interference by its inhabitants, continuing seemingly unperturbed.

However, in times of global worry, nitpickers suddenly appear all around us. Their own grief echoes and manifests itself in an endless stream of requests, ideas, complaints, wishes and distractions, in a malformed cry for help since their own pursuit of happiness is jeopardized by the global pain. How to grant them relief?


Our small human world is locked in a state of global pain for years now, impinging onto our consciousnesses, which can’t absorb it anymore. Humanity’s hope may be everlasting, but endurance of our fellow human’s showering implicit attacks on us by placing hurdles in our paths is limited. It’s not their intention, but once global unhappiness has infected us, once we encounter hurdles in our path, we lose energy to proceed and start to hurdle others, trying to draw away their energy to propel us along our own path to happiness. In the end, all our batteries are drained, and our candles are burning out helplessly.


A vicious cycle, an infectious disease we can’t escape from nor vaccinate ourselves against. At some point, those of us who pursuit missions to help others are pulled along with the balefully flowing stream, and lose sight of their own happiness. More and more forceful the river becomes, and we lose any fight we still had in ourselves.

Escaping from the mission by isolating from those who throw hurdles at us may seem desirable, and an increasing number of mission-changers are seen these days. Those who try to haul them in lure the tumbling ghosts with ever increasing pots of gold, labelled with money, increased freedom or other luxuries.

Will they achieve happiness? Time will tell. The number of those who keep struggling in the current is diminishing, and their strife for excitement is fulfilled more and more rarely as they proceed. How long will they last?

Time is the judge who will tell us these answers. And time is the physician who may heal the global state which keeps the world in its grasp for many years by now. We can only wait and endure, or try to find a way which is less painful for ourselves, trying to hurdle others as little as possible; but there is no escape.