There’s a show called After Life, which is one of those deceptively simple Ricky Gervais projects where he plays yet another emotionally defunct man with an accent sharp enough to be classified as a weapon.

The plot is straightforward, his wife dies, and instead of doing the societally approved grieving routine (cry, journal, eat yogurt with fruit in it, pretend to heal), he decides to live in a way most people only threaten to, completely indifferent to consequences, charm, or pants that fit.

Tony, the character, is not “trying to find meaning.” He’s not “processing trauma.” He’s just done pretending that any of it matters. He is, how do I put this, philosophically nuclear.

And like Gervais himself, Tony is a staunch atheist, the kind who’d rather drown than be saved by someone who prays. The kind that goes on late night shows and says, “I deny in one God less than you“.

And then there’s this scene.

He meets a kid. Tiny and bald. Clearly one of those “here to emotionally destabilize you in under three lines” characters. She has cancer, obviously. Because what else would snap a misanthrope out of his existential coma? She asks him if he believes in Heaven.

And suddenly, everyone tenses. His friend. The air. Me, on my third rewatch, pretending I’m not about to feel anything because I’m emotionally mature and definitely not haunted by unresolved childhood detachment issues.

Now, we all know what Tony’s supposed to say. The script, the arc, the expectation. He’s going to unload something about the cruel indifference of the cosmos. He’s going to drop some elegant despair bomb and we’ll all nod and pretend we weren’t hoping he’d flinch.

But instead… this mf’er lies.

No philosophical preamble or tortured hesitation. A gentle, intentional lie, like someone laying a coat over a puddle that’s never going to dry.

He tells her what she needs to hear, just for the sake of being kind, he has to choose something else over his own conviction. Which, for a man like Tony, is basically a religious experience.

He doesn’t believe in God. He doesn’t suddenly believe in heaven. He believes in protecting this small, dying person from the full weight of his personal worldview. Which, if we’re honest, most people don’t do even for their closest friends, let alone a child they met fifteen seconds ago.

And what struck me wasn’t just the restraint. It was the hierarchy. In that moment, he places compassion above truth, just for it to land harder than any sermon because it wasn’t delivered from a pulpit, it was muttered, begrudgingly, by a man who’s spent the entire show earning the right to not give a shit.

Which brings me to me. Because, unfortunately, I watched that scene and had the deeply annoying realization that I’ve spent a lot of time thinking “being right” is the same thing as “doing right.” That conviction, the oscillation between pure white and the darkest black, is more valuable than mercy. That truth is a scalpel and you should use it every time someone’s confused, even if they’re already bleeding.

One of my closest friends has, over the years, tried to explain that I tend to treat morality like a filing cabinet. She’s vehemently opposed to anything black and white. That I believe in justice the way accountants believe in ledgers. That empathy, for me, is mostly theoretical until the spreadsheet starts shaking. I dismissed this, obviously. Because nothing says “you’re wrong” quite like citing logic during an emotional intervention.

But watching Tony, of all people, choose kindness instead of the usual, it hit like a tax audit on your conscience. A quiet, terrible reordering of priorities. I saw, clearly, disgustingly clearly, that sometimes beliefs are less important than timing.

Sometimes, the kindest thing you can do is shut the hell up and let the illusion breathe.

And that’s a sentence I wouldn’t have written two days ago.

I used to think being wrong meant weakness. That caving meant cowardice. That softness was for people who couldn’t handle facts. But now I think softness is the only thing stopping facts from turning us into weapons.

And I hate that I learned this from television.

But here we are.

What a stupid, beautiful, completely unnecessary gift it is
to be wrong.

Et parfois, mentir doucement, c’est juste une autre facon d’aimer.

 

There are stories; old, unrecorded things that only pass between lips in the dark. May be not the kind of stories you tell kids. The kind you whisper to yourself when sleep won’t come. About people who made pacts; not with gods, but with creatures that existed before gods had names. Things that live in corners of the world that maps deliberately forget.

They say some people once worshiped a “chathan”, known by many other names, but essentially a demon or some variant of it. An imp, perhaps?

Not the loud, grotesque kind from movies or cheap airport horror paperbacks. This one is quiet. Patient. It follows. It waits. It promises favors in a voice like still water. A job, a lover, a lucky number on a lottery ticket. You’d think it’s a coincidence. You think you’re clever. You think you made it happen. And the chathan laughs; a dry, brittle sound like burning hair.

The deal is simple: it gives while you live; it takes when you die. Your eternal soul for a few small worldly favors.

What anyone who ever made this deal failed to understand, in their greed or desperation, is that the chathan is inherently evil. It is the only language it knows, and therefore is not capable of giving anything good. Every fruit it gives will have a rotten core. And sometimes, most times, because it is not capable of honoring its own word, for what is honor to an imp, it doesn’t wait till you are dead to take your soul. It begins early; with small things.

Your focus starts slipping. No big deal. Just forgot your keys. Just missed a deadline. Just lost a sentence halfway through saying it.

Then the carnival kicks into high gear.

Your mind becomes a tent with its flaps open in a storm. Thoughts fly in and out. None stay long enough to be useful. There’s noise, constant noise; like ten TVs screaming in different languages. There’s static, like your brain is stuck between channels. You try to read a page and your eyes crawl off it. You try to listen and your own thoughts interrupt. There’s always a next thing; and a next thing; and a next thing. And you chase them all like a fool, hands full of nothing.

You forget people’s names. Then faces. Then birthdays. Then yourself.

Whatever happened to the smartest man in the room, the multi-talented artist, the one who had promise? You ask yourself as you’re being ridiculed by your own past, trying to cling on something that never was.

You won’t even remember making the deal. Some part of you assumes you once made such a deal. What else could possibly be responsible for this soulless existence. You accept your fate.

You live in the punishment. A sentence served without remembering the crime. You wake up every day in a body that is somehow yours and not. A brain that you pilot like a bad shopping cart; pulling violently to one side, resisting every turn. You try to fix it; with apps and journals and willpower. It’s like trying to cage fog.

You would think: Maybe I’m just lazy. Maybe I’m broken. Maybe I deserve this. And the chathan, always walking just behind you, rests its chin on your shoulder and says, “Exactly.”

And this; this soul-eviction, this fractured loop of shame and noise and forgetting; this is what they sometimes call adhd.

Why is the opposite of hope despair and not indifference?

Why is it is easier to hate when you no longer love?

Back before the brain was addled, I was a fan of Nietzsche who explained this in how own way. The oppressed never seek emancipation, it’s not in their nature. They seek a role-reversal. That’s how we get an Israel after a Holocaust, a Stalin after the Tsar, a Spanish Inquisition post-Roman repression. It’s a cycle that just keeps turning.

This pattern isn’t just confined to the history books, either. It’s present, here, today, if you look for it. It’s in the way we are tempted to fight racism with reverse racism, respond to misogyny with misandry, meet terrorism with islamophobia, and answer crime with tribal vengeance. These reactions aren’t intentional, they’re just us, listening to our deepest, most primal instincts.

It is a bug in our kernel. Tribalism, we are born with it.

This seemingly involuntary action, when continued with reckless abandon, drives a deeper wedge between a man and his hope for a solution. Yesterday’s oppressed becomes today’s oppressor, while today’s oppressed is being primed to become tomorrow’s oppressor.

The cycle didn’t start with him, and it certainly won’t end with him.

Inking my thoughts onto the page no longer holds the same innate fluidity it once did. This might be a fruitless endeavor at pattern interrupt, or possibly, it could be the dawn of an unconventional series, one of slippery banana peels and whimsical unicorn dreams.

So, here we are.

“Yes, here we are”

Tell me about the new stories.

“There is one about an average guy pretending to be a millionaire to seduce a rich girl.”

That sounds clichéd

“He offers to provide her with financial support when she gets herself into a spot of trouble, in return she should do sexual stuff”

He turns her into a prostitute?

“No, just for him”

How is that any different?

“It is an ongoing arrangement they have”

And then they fall in love?

“Something like that”

Still sounds clichéd.

“I didn’t finish it yet, premise might seem usual”

Did you start writing it ?

“No”

Why is that?

“She blocked him all over social media.”

I see, what else are you working on?

“I have one where a guy is in a dilemma when his best friend cheats on his wife.”

Is the guy friends with the wife?

“He is, but he doesn’t like her all that much”

Was he friends with her before they got together?

“No.”

Then guy shouldn’t say anything. We don’t exactly know what is going on, and ‘bro code’ and all that. Do you have any proper stories?

“A super smart guy who is used to getting his way finds himself in trouble..”

When he meets a girl ?

“Yes, something like that. Do you have to ruin everything?”

I don’t. It sounded like a movie blurb in Netflix. What about comedies? Anything funny?

“No”

That’s a shame; you must have something?

“How about an annoying co-worker who dabbed his married colleague in ladies’ perfume which leads to the said colleague’s divorce.”

Is the annoying co-worker female?

“No, just annoying.”

That sounds funny. Do you have to take it as far as a divorce? Can’t the colleague just get in trouble with his wife?

“I could, then you’d call it a cliché again”

You know, it doesn’t matter what I call it, it’s what you believe.

“Get outta my head, I have to wake up now”

It is getting toasty outside, I think you overslept again, good morning.

There’s one thing you gotta love about being a coder, it teaches you how to think. The more you code, the more rational and linear your thought process becomes. Pretty soon you find yourself applying code optimization techniques to your thought process. Give it a couple of years, one fine evening while you’re sitting in your room, reading a random book and you suddenly realize that you can do multivariable calculus in your head. Gotta love that.

 – The rational, linear, no-mistakes, perfect me (c. 2013).

The great thing about writing down your most abstract thoughts is that you get to go back and read it after a few years and wonder how much you’ve changed since then. I no longer love being rational and linear. I love mistakes, failures, the defining imperfections. I have made my peace with irrationally impulsive decisions. I feel that I am filled with an overwhelming sense of self awareness and understanding when I look at you, and I see your imperfections and I realize that I love you for it.