Connor woke up with an uneasy feeling. It was a clear day, but there was something he didn’t like in the air. There was something making him want to stay in bed all day and not go anywhere. It was a Saturday, so he could generally afford it. Except for cleaning his apartment he didn’t have any appointments. He was feeling depressed for some reason but he wasn’t sure why. Only later would he realise that the reason was a sudden realisation he had come to – that his life was completely empty and meaningless.

He got up and went to the bathroom and brushed his teeth and then took a shower in the hopes that the uneasy feeling would be washed away. It wasn’t. He went in the kitchen and made some coffee. As usual, he drank it with a lot of cream and sugar. He was feeling hungry but he had no appetite so he didn’t eat anything. He was wondering how long he wouldn’t be able to rest and what part of his day he would lose. He hated the fact that he had only two days of some freedom and he couldn’t enjoy them... And then it hit him. That was the reason for his anxiety. He started thinking about and slowly realised how empty his, our existence actually was. We spend our whole lives in pursuit of illusions and lie to ourselves on a daily basis just to somehow make ourselves feel better. We were slaves. We were about as free as a cow is. We like thinking we’re independent and that we have liberty but the truth was were deceiving ourselves – there was no liberty and there were very few choices.

He thought more about it and the more he thought, the more miserable he became. What were his actual choices in life – he could choose what to do in his spare time – clean, read or watch a film but he couldn’t just choose go bungee-jumping in Japan, for example – he had to go to work on Monday. At work he had to do whatever the boss told him to and after work he was too tired to do anything else. It was perfect – almost everybody was enslaved and there was very little, if at all, that anybody could do about it.

Connor took a look around. That was his life – he had spent years of his life trying to build a somewhat nice habitat. There wasn’t anything he wanted right now more than to take those years back, to enjoy life more. How could he? How can you enjoy something when there are so many limitations? He realised that finding that out was the way to enlightenment, happiness and maybe even wisdom.