Drifting in the Space of Ramblings

Ramblings About Manipulation

I try to close my eyes and think of nothing, but it becomes increasingly difficult to cease the flow of thoughts swirling through my head. I ponder why things are as they are and why everything happened the way it did to lead me here, to this particular point in space, in my final moments.

All the women I've met would never date a guy if he didn't have a cool car and a good job, yet all the men I've met never respected these kinds of women. I never quite understood this. A guy could be the nicest person ever, but women wouldn't go out with him because he didn't have a car; they wouldn't even give him a chance to talk. What's worse is that many times, a woman goes out with a guy because he has a fancy car and falls for him, but the guy isn't willing to take the risk of being with someone who went out with him because of his car, so he leaves her crying for someone else. This probably comes from the time when a father would marry off his daughter depending on the husband's dowry. The rules imposed by society hundreds of years ago still shape and manipulate today's society. I believe this is why no relationship works out, why there are so many breakups and fights. People care more about money and material interests than about what really matters.

But what really matters?

Why did I want to be an astronaut after all?

Social manipulations come from all sides: family, friends, school, television, radio, books, movies, music, blogs, comics, advertisements, bar conversations, relationships, and everything else that surrounds us. I wonder if deep down I ended up becoming an astronaut to have a cool car and a good job. Maybe I would be much happier running a little corner store selling fruits, getting fat behind the counter with a wife and children running around, but society screamed inside my head that this would make me a loser. I didn't want to be a loser, so I went ahead. I studied and became an astronaut with a cool car and a good job, but that's all I had, nothing more.

The problem is that people never stop to think about what they are being manipulated into. I never stopped to think about it. If women stopped to think, "Why does the guy need to have a cool car and a good job for me to go out with him?" maybe things would start to change. People would have to stop thinking only about their own interests and the material possessions of others for the world to start moving in the right direction again.

Here in space, so quiet, silent, and tranquil, we can think clearly, without the television interfering, shouting in our brains, preventing us from thinking with our own ideas. If I could send a message to Earth now, it would be:

"Turn off your television now and talk to the person next to you, ask who they are, and most importantly, ask yourselves who you are."

I close my eyes and try to answer myself, "Who am I?"