You've Got Places To Be

You know what I love about cities?

You.

Yeah, you.

Don’t look behind.

Nobody there is doing better.

You wake up.

Pick up your phone.

Not even a thought in between.

You stare straight

into the soul of the screen

mostly because muscle memory

also because that's the only place

souls dwell these days. 

You look at your phone

to check if you still exist

in other people’s lives.

No notifications?

You feel you've been downsized;

in thoughts, prayers, and relevance.

You shrink a little.

And then you get ready.

Dress up.

Step out.

And for what? 

Work? 

No. That'd be too simple.

You head out

to perform stability.

You walk fast.

Everyone does.

It’s not urgency.

It’s camouflage.

Because if you slow down,

even for a second,

it might look like you have nowhere to be.

And in a city,

having nowhere to be

is worse than having nothing to be.

In a city, 

you've got places to be.

So you keep moving.

Like your life has directions.

Like there’s a destination

that isn’t just… another version of this.

Conversations are efficient.

“How are you?”

“Good.”

We’ve reduced human emotion

to a loading bar that never completes.

Because the real answer —

“I don’t know what I’m doing, I’m tired in a way sleep can’t fix, and I think I built a life I don’t want to be in” —

is not a conversation.

It’s a liability.

So you learn the script.

“I’m good.”

You say it enough times,

it becomes less of a lie

and more of a habit.

Which is worse.

And relationships?

We’ve optimized those too.

You don’t fall in love.

Falling requires faith in gravity

and gravity is too slow.

You enter a negotiation instead.

A mutually beneficial association, 

a symbiotic ecosystem, 

until a sudden realisation dawns upon, 

"How do you tell symbiotes from parasites?"

You grow romance 

like entrepreneurs scale business.

Timing.

Availability.

Terms and conditions.

“I need space.”

Take it.

There’s plenty.

That’s the problem.

You’re not competing for love.

You’re competing for attention

in a room where everyone is also competing.

It’s not rejection.

It’s just…

you weren’t the best distraction at that moment.

Sit with that.

No actually, 

don’t.

That’s how people spiral.

So you move on.

New chat.

New person.

Same pattern.

Different name.

Same conversation.

Same ending.

And you call this experience.

Growth.

Clarity.

It’s not.

It’s repetition

with a foreign accent.

And then there’s ambition.

You’re building something.

Of course you are.

Everyone here is building something.

A company. 

A career.

A brand.

A version of yourself

that sounds convincing

when you say it out loud.

Nobody asks

“Can I live with this?”

Because that’s not the goal.

The goal is, 

“Can I keep going?”

And you can.

That’s the tragedy.

You can keep going

in a life that doesn’t fit

for a very long time.

Years.

Decades.

Entire identities.

Until one day,

you get everything you worked for.

The job.

The money.

The version of you

that once felt impossible.

And it’s quiet.

Not peaceful.

Not satisfying.

Just…

quiet.

And in that quiet,

for the first time,

nothing is chasing you.

No deadlines.

No urgency.

No next thing.

Just you.

And your brain finally asks, 

“Was this the plan, 

or just what happened

while you were too busy to question it?”

That’s the moment.

That’s the one moment

the city cannot protect you from.

And you will try.

Oh, you will try.

You’ll pick up your phone.

Open something.

Scroll.

Refresh.

But it won’t hit the same.

Because once you see it, 

you don’t unsee it.

That your entire life

has been a series of well-timed distractions

keeping you from a question

you were always supposed to answer.

Not because you couldn’t answer it, 

but because you already knew you wouldn’t like the answer.

And now it’s here.

No notifications.

No noise.

No escape routes.

Just one simple, stupid, terrifying question:

“If none of this was necessary, 

then what was?”

Anyway.

Alarm’s set for tomorrow?

Good.

Let’s not fix anything.

You’ve got places to be.