Prologue
Say, would you rather have a life of peace, or a life of success?
Let's get straight to the point—you are probably thinking of success. Many do, actually. A majority of society, across their varying cultures and tales, would rather have success than peace. Otherwise, wars wouldn't be a thing.
But how do you define success and peace, actually? Is it that success is established through external validations, while peace is through internal preservation? Or do you not have the capacity to differentiate the two?
I do not get the concept of success.
It is a blade that can be wielded by those who have it, yet a chain to those who don't. To chase success is to be a subject to human greed for validations of their desires. Medals, certificates, praises—all things that provide a sense of pride to the human mind, I hate them all.
Yet I cannot entirely say peace is any better.
It is a pretty intangible concept that—more often than not— is achieved through the struggles for success. They are two sides of the same coin, remove one and humanity perishes.
So what is it that is essential?
That, is something I cannot answer myself. Or answer clearly, at the very least.
I've read many philosophies that real-life started to feel like some mechanical gears of confusion, yet the answer was still as ambiguous as at the start. It's like spiraling into a web of multiple worldviews and still not realizing you are already trapped.
But this is the one thing I know. Many of these ideas met at the same common thread. They all found their own way to what is sometimes overlooked through the struggles of society: satisfaction.
To be satisfied is to be content and happy. Yet to reach this satisfaction is to search for peace and success. Both of which are equally intangible in a way, making the search for satisfaction one of the hardest strife to exist for humanity.
This is the thing I was looking for.
Satisfaction. To reach a point where zero didn't feel as bad as the society made it sound.
Yet satisfaction itself was not a sweet candy. It is a poison disguised as a remedy. Something that I've proven as I traversed through the life of a senior high school in the most prestigious intelligence-centered academy there is. The more I got tangled, the more the concept blurred.
What I thought was self discovery turned out to be a series of unfortunate events that almost wiped the line between naivete and intelligence.
This is not a story of my success. This is the story of my desire for satisfaction disguised as peace—and how the system destroys that dream. And all of this started from zero.
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