1 Past Life

As far as I can remember, I have been pragmatic and cynical over all the knowledge and things that people around me and all over the world take for granted. When my teachers at school introduced a new subject in class, or someone told me about something, I would conduct my own research before believing a single letter of their stories.

At first, people encouraged me, telling me that I was a philosopher in the making, questioning every single piece of conventional wisdom and life. This admiration and support became annoyance and frustration pretty quickly once I started correcting the faults in their stories and knowledge and pointed out the contradictions and hypocrisy in their speeches and arguments.

I have to admit that I was snobbish about it but in my defense, I was just a little boy. Due to my parents' jobs, we frequently moved to different countries and even across the ocean, which allowed me to interact with many different cultures and people, as well as the hardship some of them went through in their lives.

This experience led me to look for a more emotional response in life. I was flabbergasted at the sheer absurdity of the state some places were in. While my family would travel from one ball to another among the foreign and local diplomats, statesmen, and military in their expensive dresses and suits, adorned with fascinating jewels, people would beat each other for just a single loaf of bread. The more I saw their world, the clearer my own world became, and I started making sharp remarks and clever insults disguised as compliments, as that was my only way of fighting back. I thought I was accomplishing something, I thought I was speaking the sentences others didn't have the ability and opportunity to do so. That too came to an end once someone pointed out it to my parents.

I was just a child and there was nothing I could do, so they forced me to study music and arts to distance me from their conversations and their society. I suppose, as they deemed me too "spoiled" and "arrogant" to see the "real world", which my parents often liked to mention in their never-ending nagging and preaching. Mind you, this "real world" was often a place where my parents and the like-minded rich pricks would often get together to circlejerk and lick each others' asses. However, I believe the world I saw was far more real than anything they could ever see.

I was once confined to my room for two weeks for calling an ex-commender who was in charge of a unit that wiped out a village from the face of the earth, "criminal". Apparently, I was "disrespectful". I burst into mad laughter after I heard that word in reference not to the man who massacred hundreds of innocent farmers, but to me who called him out for what he was.

After that day, I never went against my parents' will, burying my ideas, beliefs, and my grudges deep in my heart, until I could be free from their influence, which wasn't until I went to a university. I chose literature as my major as I believed words and pen to have more power over people than any other tool like Edward Bulwer-Lytton, a thought I still believe. I was part of humanitarian and environmental organizations throughout my university life.

After I graduated, I severed my relations with my family and went on to travel across the world in a series of humanitarian missions. I would sometimes work as a teacher, sometimes I helped with the infrastructure or transportation of goods in warzones. Through the years, I have met many brilliant minds and tried to help them as much as I could. Sometimes they would manage to escape the hell they lived in and live a better life, other times I would find their dead corpses. I once witnessed an 11 years old girl I taught a few years prior being forced to marry a warlord on a mission to bring supply aid to a nearby village. I almost reached for the gun of one of our military escorts to shoot the bastard in the face. The image of her eyes dyed red from crying haunted me at night for the years to come, and I had to endure violent tantrums.

At times, I would think about the words my parents often told me, specifically about not seeing the real world. What they meant was simple; there was no reason for them to care about the other, the unfortunate billions of the world as they thought they deserved it. Throughout my life, I always viewed humans as a single species, without much emphasis on ethnicity and race, as I, myself, was of mixed heritage. But this unfairness and inequality was something more than just racism or discrimination. The problems were fundamentally engraved into human DNA, and I was powerless against this system.

Throughout all my life, I never once believed in God, nor prayed to a deity, even though I found religion as a subject to be fascinating. Even now, lying on my deathbed, I still don't think there is a God, but if there really is one, I prayed that they give me the opportunity and ability to destroy those who harmed the people, the planet, and the civilization I held so dear to me, and thus I closed my eyes for the eternity.

...or at least it was supposed to be.

"Where am I?"