Retirement is a Scam

The Irony Of Life is You’ll Always Be Stuck in a Box

Riku Arikiri
3 min readNov 25, 2022

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Photo by sebastiaan stam on Unsplash

Whether it’s your cradle or your grave, that’s one of life’s truths. You might be thinking what a mortifying way of starting something.

Let me close this story, and go towards a more refreshing feel-good sight.

You have the floor, you’ve got the choices.

But it’s just another box you put yourself into.

It won’t change the inevitable.

Someone you know is sitting miserably in a box whether it be their own making, choices led to that place. Or is the world just being cruel?

Why is it that we never teach our children the fundamental grim truths about life?

Why do we shelter them from it? Leaving them helpless when the time comes, when we won’t be there; when it dawns on them.

Would you like it when they curse you? Or curse themselves for being utterly useless in the face of defying adversity?

No matter what they do, whoever they seek, it won’t change.

Sure optimism is a fool’s tool.

Things are going to change.

But…

Can you truly change uncertainty?

Yes, you can.

But at what cost?

Are you willing to pay that cost, over and over again until you run dry.

And then you give up.

Is that fate?

Is that our destiny?

I don’t know.

I’ve been to that place, plenty of times. I’ve given up, and I’ve stood up to face life’s differential circumstances. However, I’ve always felt that you’ll make it one way or another to the other side of the fence.

It doesn’t matter what happens in the middle.

So long as you keep sight of what lies ahead.

But it does matter. You matter. Your life, pain, and suffering matter. It matters to those who love you. There’s just one thing that keeps the constant pain of going through life, meaningful. It’s family, it's people who care for you no matter what.

No matter whether you’re rich or poor. No matter if you've built strong or weak.

No matter what, they love you.

If you’ve got those people, it doesn’t feel so bad being in a box.

It feels good.

It feels complete.

I have clinical depression, and ever since I let all the feelings that I kept from my box of ignorance, flow.

I’ve felt a sense of freedom as well as angst.

However, the sense of completeness truly bewilders me.

I can feel everything, my pain, my guilt, my sorrow, my joy.

I can reason while feeling all of this. All of it is within my grasp.

There’s only one place that I know of, that gives this experience.

And it’s the place between life and death.

A state of peace blended within the emptiness of chaos.

A place that doesn’t choose between good or bad.

A place that holds you regardless of what life you’ve lived.

Or what joys you experienced or pains you’ve fought.

It accepts you as you are. As you will be. As you ever were. Have no fear, it will be there to hold it all. It will hold all of you.

So why fear something that accepts you?

See acceptance isn’t bad, it gives you chance to plan to act.

Every person is different to choose that outcome. However they know to find theirs, is a matter I leave to them.

You should do that as well.

You’ve got time.

It’s up to you to see what life holds for you.

It’s a pretty simple place, where one can get lost.

But remember there are those that might find you. Or you, them.

So just in case leave a door or a window open in that box, always.

Thus when the time comes, you…

P.S do not retire, or else you will.

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Riku Arikiri

It’s never black or white. Sometimes there’s a bit of spicy red in there as well.