Ha, how funny it when adults say to their children "Don't waste your life doing xyz" or "don't live a purposeless life" or something on those lines. The purpose of life is to live, no more and no less. And I am sure it isn't to slog it over in school, college and then work forever at some job trying to earn money and be successful. Is that what life has been reduced to, in a nutshell? All around me, I see people struggling in the rat race, trying to climb up and up and up, and those who have reached the top, still trying to go up further, or to maintain their position. Don't get me wrong, money is always wonderful to have, but I don't think earning it should have become the main purpose of our being. And that what's a capitalist society encourages.

My counterpart, my anti-thesis: the underground man, the man who lives underground and doesn't involve himself with society and humans, lives in great luxury. It is true that he is not rich, but he has enough to sustain himself and his lifestyle, without working for someone else, or indeed, working at all. Whereas I, the one stuck above the ground, has to work and live in a society where he doesn't belong, and doesn't wish to live in. I wish I could live too in a degraded but comfortable, and most importantly, free state like him, but one thing that keeps people in the rat race is the promise of luxury. I have got accustomed to a lifestyle that requires me to work, and going below it, to live out there in the woods, as a hunter-gatherer-farmer, or living in impoverished conditions, is not within me. 

Besides, look at how capitalism endangers our very survival. The skills most important to survival, such as farming, physical labor, knowledge of building and construction by our own hands, is valued below writing scientific thesis's and running big business companies. None of societies most esteemed, successful people are capable of living by themselves should the need arise. And yet, it is these who live in society's luxury, while the one's supplying us with our necessities are barely able to survive themselves. What a paradoxical society this is, wherein most of the population don't have the ability to supply their own necessities, and those who do enable this society to function, are considered unimportant.

Look at the crisis of farmers, of laborers, of fishermen, and of all those who help us meet our basic necessities of food and shelter. Most of them live in poverty, and earn just enough to meet their needs. While look at our actors, our musicians, or even our writers, they don't produce necessities, and yet how much more they earn than those who provide them. 

It is a trap of society and capitalism, this. It makes us incapable of living by ourselves, by valuing skills that make us weaker and more dependent on society.  And those who have to skills to exit it, and to live independently, to finally obtain the freedom that most of us don't enjoy (can you leave your job, exit society and still survive in relative comfort?!), are simply not possessing the capital to be able to free themselves from the world's shackles.

Perhaps the ones who are very rich, the ones who have a bank account capable of sustaining them even on its interest, are the ones truly free. They are not motivated by necessity, and if they wish, they could easily leave their job and just play video games like PUBG for the rest of their lives, if they chose to do so. I will never understand why do they still choose to work. Perhaps it is their passion, but I can never imagine any type of work being anything but work.

And so, what course is there for me to take, but to try and run in this hated race too, though all I desire is an exit from it? How curious it is, that even the one who doesn't want to run in the race, has to do so, and in full earnest, should he want to be capable of leaving it. The hatred of work, and of the systems of this strange capitalistic world, obstructs my progress towards the exit leading to true freedom. The underground man can fully indulge in this hatred, while I am forced to keep my entire true being aside, in order to function and trudge on. Such is the fate of all those who wish for freedom from work in this capitalistic world. Lets hope that retirement is worth it and would allow me to indulge in doing absolutely nothing, without regretting it.