It’s hard to say when exactly the system failed. It was probably a few years ago. But just as the powers at be continue to prop up our perished economic system and society a-la Weekend at Bernie’s, society at large goes on as if things are alive and well.
There was one particular moment when it was all unmistakably clear, though.
One sunny summer day in Australia, I went to have lunch with some classmates in celebration of completing our first semester of law school.
Carrie, one of my Chinese friends, asked, “Where have you been the happiest? Do you like it here better than in the US? What about compared to Japan?”
I didn’t really need to think about this one. “Definitely here. Things aren’t perfect, but it feels pretty good here. I know my wife’s MBA program was a bit of scam, but I think she’ll find a job here and we’ll be happy. I don’t really even think I’ll be visiting home anytime soon,” I said.
Concurrently, my wife was reacquainting herself with a Hindu goddess she had once worshiped.
I came home from lunch, and my wife and I were sprawled out on the most comfortable couch I have ever owned. It was a pale green cloud for the two of us.
My phone suggested I read a news story about how the migration policy of Australia had changed, and it was almost like a targeted attack. By the time I finished law school, I would be exactly too old to be allowed to use my new degree to get a job in Australia.
Within weeks, we found ourselves crammed into my wife’s childhood bedroom in a small town in Oklahoma, our lives in Sydney feeling completely unreal. The world we had spent our lives in no longer seemed to be there anymore.
When my wife got hurt a few weeks later and no one cared to stop and see if we were ok, I felt in the pit of my stomach that the world had ended.
Nothing was ever the same again after that moment. In that moment, it became unbearably obvious that we were seeking help from a corpse. That all of us were living inside the belly of a long-dead beast.
And once that veil was lifted, it never came back.