Comfort

[undated]

I watched a man drop a cup today. Plastic. Empty. It rolled under a table and he didn’t bother to retrieve it. He stepped over it. Everyone else did too. By the time I left the room it had become part of the furniture.

That is how everything happens.

They think neglect is passive. It isn’t. It requires a decision — repeated until it feels like nature. No one admits to deciding. They just let time do the work for them.

Time is very cooperative.

People talk constantly but say almost nothing. Words pile up. Apologies. Explanations. Opinions. None of them require action. They speak as if speech itself were proof of virtue. As if articulation equals correction.

I have noticed that the more people speak about values, the less likely they are to inconvenience themselves for them.

They say they are overwhelmed. Overwhelmed by information. By suffering. By choice. This is another convenience. Being overwhelmed excuses paralysis. Paralysis preserves comfort.

Comfort is never questioned.

I pass mirrors and see people studying themselves, adjusting, checking, correcting surfaces. No one looks inward long enough to be disturbed. Disturbance is inefficient. Disturbance interferes with schedules.

Schedules matter. Morality does not.

Someone once told me that people are doing the best they can. I think this is true. I also think their best is insufficient. Both things can exist at once. They do not like that idea.

They prefer absolution.

I write these things down because otherwise they blur together. The days. The observations. The confirmations. Writing separates them. Gives shape to what would otherwise dissolve into background.

Background is where responsibility goes to die.

Sometimes I wonder if they notice how often they repeat themselves. The same arguments. The same excuses. The same promises that never quite reach action. Repetition comforts them. It creates the illusion of stability.

Stability without direction is drift.

I do not hate them. Hatred would require energy. I am past that. What remains is recognition. Pattern recognition is unemotional. It does not argue with what it sees.

They will say this is obsession. Obsession implies fixation on something exceptional. There is nothing exceptional here. That is the problem.

Ordinary days. Ordinary neglect. Ordinary harm.

The cup will still be under the table tomorrow. Someone might kick it further out of the way. Someone might step on it. No one will pick it up.

Eventually it will be swept away by someone paid to remove evidence of indifference. They will call this maintenance.

Maintenance is how decay survives.

I keep writing.

Not because it changes anything.
Because stopping would mean forgetting.