[cepAceryTem]

I first saw this on E-Budo years and years ago. Unfortunately I can't find the original post (or the writer) as I think it was lost in one of their forum crashes over the years...

Anyway, I loved it that much I copied it into a word doc and printed it for my office wall - and it survived the crash.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.




Life is Good

You sit beneath the parallel rectangles of frosted fluorescent lights. The false ceiling tiles imaginarily divide up the office’s space into neat little sections periodically decorated with dotted lines of fan-shaped fire extinguisher nozzles. The ceiling is a picture of repetition and simplicity. It is not something that draws the eye. It is much like your job.

The blue sky, singular green tree, and sunlight of the outside industrial park is divided into vague vertical paintings of freedom by the grey, uninspired blinds. Blank corkboards of marbled grey and white, painfully small paintings, and once trendy posters decorate the bone white walls. The only decorative touches to the otherwise bleak room are the glowing red exit sign, the wall mounted fire extinguisher, and the fire alarm switch. The only items suggesting any amount of excitement in an otherwise dull string of days and weeks.

You are seated behind a C-shaped desk shoved to the back of a common area of other drones at their desks. Each desk is touched with a bit of the individual drones’ personalities. Family pictures, toys, and signs with mildly amusing sayings decorate the tops of computer screens and desk surfaces. From here to you can distinguish the demeanour of each of your co-workers by the personal affects they possess in their small, regulated territory of space. It is the only way you interact with one another now other than the sporadic and rare conversation about movies, television, or work.

The room is punctuated with the click and clatter of drones interacting with their consoles. Keyboards the colour of the walls and palm-stained mice. Periodically someone sneezes or clears their throat. The building’s air exchange fans hum in the back of the skull and computer fans hiss at the edge of your vision. Set to as not to offend anyone of worthwhile taste, a desk radio is set to neutered contemporary music. No one is tapping his or her foot.

Recently a dress code was introduced. It makes no sense considering you are never in the public eye. Your daily domain is the same size of a prison cell with more comfortable seating, no chance to sleep, and the boundaries of your desk for walls. Who would want to visit you in this place? Nonetheless dress shirts, ties, and casual pants are now required. Considering that it is unlikely that anyone would notice if you were wearing pants under your desk over the course of any day, the concept of a dress code is lost on you. You didn’t tuck your golf shirt bearing the company’s logo into your black jeans today. When the monthly casual day comes around you are thinking about wearing a shirt, tie, and casual pants.

The large office clock with its bold dozen numbers hangs between the windows. An inner ring of twenty-four hour numbers is displayed in smaller red numbers in case you are an idiot and suddenly find the office converted into a military facility during your lunch break. The red second hand ticks its way around the face of the bland clock. The big hand hangs at the bottom of the arc like it died several days ago. The little hand seems like it hasn’t moved in weeks.

Fortunately, the second hand still seems to move but in the same pattern your career is. This reminds you that time is supposed to be passing and that someday you will retire. At least you have job security. You can be here for the majority of your life, if you wanted to. It is likely that you will remain here, because it pays well and the benefits are nice.

You take a sip from your costly can of cola. You can’t help but think the money you gave the machine downstairs was an awful lot for some thick brown water with bubbles and sugar. At least the can adds some life and colour to your desk. The red reminds you a little of the perpetually glowing exit sign on the other side of the room. The white reminds you of the sunlight calling to you from the freedom of the other side of your vertical blind prison.

Enough of this place, you decide. It’s time for a break. You get up from your desk. No one gives you any surprised looks but they seem to be keeping their peripheral attention on you. You head for the exit and down the faux tiled stairs to the outside.

The outside isn’t much better than the inside. The ground is a loading zone. Small pebbles get stuck in your shoe tread. A semi-trailer juts out from a loading bay like some massive pecker on wheels and legs. Traffic zips perpendicular to the mouth of the loading zone on four lanes.

You lift your head and make you way to the front of the building. To cover up the otherwise bleak nature of the construction someone planted a small lawn out front and ringed it with trees. Some enterprising smokers complained long enough that management finally placed some picnic tables for them to sit on during their seemingly constant nicotine breaks. The interior of the building is smoke free. Right now no one is feeding the monkey on his or her back. You park your butt on the tabletop and put your feet up on the bench of one of the unimaginatively red-stained structures.

You close your eyes. You reach out with your ears, searching for something to bring you back. The moist summer wind rushes through the branches, over the grass, and around you. You breathe in the fresh air through your dry, air-conditioned nose into your stale lungs. You hold the precious freshness of the summer air for a moment and then release it through your slightly open mouth. Some of what is inside you peels away with the escaping air. You repeat the simple act of breathing and begin to clear away the mental and spiritual dust that has collected by expelling it through your breathing. In a mere few cycles, you feel much better.

You slowly open your eyes. The greens and browns of your surroundings feel fresh and welcoming. You crank your neck and several bones crackle happily back into place. Memory images of the office begin to fade and lift from the back of your shoulders. You begin to feel the uneven wood of the table’s edge on your comparatively soft palms and fingers. You feel something real and solid rather than bleak and neutered.

The last thing you realize touching you is the first thing you sought. The rays of the life-giving sun heat your face. The blue sky carries its passive white passengers from horizon to horizon. You close your eyes and focus on the heat and basic pleasure that something as common as sunlight still gives a living thing. A small smile pulls at your warming cheeks as the invisible layer of conditioned air dissipates from the surface of your body and clothes.

You sit here for a while, curled in the flow of the wind, basking in the face of the sun, and feeling the wood table edge between your curled hands.

Finally you get up from your momentary touch with nature and return to your desk. Your shift ends shortly, and tonight you can train. Life is good.