stupid is as stupid does

most of the time, and it didn't matter what he did, J felt stupid. not in a way of lacking intelligence but in the way one might feel when doing something you don't see the point of doing but still continue doing it; useless, and at the same time annoyed by the fact that even if you didn't exactly know what you could be doing instead, you knew that it would still be better than what you're stuck with.

this feeling of pointlessness infiltrated every area of his daily existence. it started the moment he opened his eyes and ended, if only momentarily, when he finally fell asleep; practically every action he performed in between made him feel stupid.

waking up. brushing his teeth. eating breakfast. putting the milk back into the fridge. getting dressed. kissing his wife goodbye. dropping his son off to daycare. going to work. working. talking with people. going to the bathroom. lunching with colleagues. working some more. making phone calls. looking out of the window down to a construction site next door. driving home. following traffic rules. mowing the lawn. eating dinner. watching tv. turning off the tv. having sex. taking a shower. undressing. falling asleep.

everything. even dreaming felt stupid, at least afterwards.

the reason he felt the way he did was that nothing made really sense when you thought about it, and lately J had. all these actions you kept on repeating until your dying day; same monotonous tasks, none of which would ever be completed. what was the point, really? it was so arduous, just staying alive, and so unbelievably dull, and there was nothing left that would have given him true pleasure or happiness.

and yet, at the same time, J didn't feel particularly sad or even down. he didn't agree with being depressed, something his wife had suggested when he had once made the mistake of talking about the subject to her. J had no desire to end his existence nor did he have any difficulties in getting out of bed or taking care of his responsibilities; basically he did everything that was expected of him, sometimes even more, but he just felt stupid about it.

it interested him somewhat how other people seemed to miss the fact that everything was pointless; but few failed attempts to bring it up in a conversation and his own inability to express the depth of his own experience in this matter soon made him stop trying.

not that it would have mattered, anyway.

but how people had the energy to build barricades and climb on them because of something entirely irrelevant was almost exhausting. so what, he felt like saying every time his wife or colleague or friend brought up some heated topic that happened to be under societal discussion at the moment. so what, what did it matter, soon they would be agitated over something else instead even if the previous matter would have not been solved at all. this ability to make fleeting emotional investment into something and then move on to some other equally stupid matter didn't cease to puzzle J. why did they bother?

didn't they see how stupid it was? their behaviour as well as the matter itself?

but of course he didn't say so what, he was too aware of the reaction this would have more often that not caused in the people talking about something they found meaningful; and J didn't have the interest to stand up for his opinion as it really wasn't that important at all. it didn't matter to him what other people thought, he really had no need to try to make them see how stupid they were being; so he just sat through the conversations reacting at appropriate times by humming approvingly or throwing in a short comment, delivered with a required amount of enthusiasm so as not to be called insensitive or selfish or some other word reserved for those who seemed not to care enough.

and if this charade sometimes made him want to bite his wrists open he certainly didn't let it show. 

J didn't quite remember if things had always been like this; wether or not there had been a time when he hadn't felt stupid. he did recognize the feeling from his childhood, recalled hiding in the bushes next to the field close to his childhood home in the midst of a game of hide and seek and thinking how absolutely ridiculous it was. he also remembered with clarity how as a teenager he had found it unnecessary to chase girls or prove his masculinity through fighting with other pubescent males. as a young man, when going to university, he always did the bare minimum required so as to get conveniently by; because even if he thought it to be stupid, he himself was not and by this age he had understood quite well that this was the way the world worked and in order for him to exist in it he had to play by its rules. so he went through the required steps, smiled in the right places and danced the necessary dances, and it all turned out rather alright.

and he didn't mind, really. he was used to it. but sometimes - it was very rare these days and to be honest he didn't remember that last time it had happened - he came across someone who had such joy and such passion in them, in everything they said and did and were - and for a fleeting second he thought it to be possible; to experience life like that, so that it didn't feel pointless. for a fraction of a second he thought that perhaps he was wrong after all, maybe there was a trick to it, something he had missed, maybe everything wasn't stupid; but then the moment always passed and the feeling of stupidity resurfaced, and he would shrug his shoulders and drink a glass of water.

but whether it was these fractions of time that kept him actually going and not the general acceptance that he had adopted as his daily guise was something he didn't know the answer to; and to be completely honest, he didn't even care.