Escape from the ever-present pressures of modern life has become impossible for this hero, David. Consumed and buried, there is nothing left as contentment for the existence of an average man.
Connection to the social world through that infernal iPhone stalks life and times, sitting in the pocket, waiting at the bedside, begging attention, securing provision of escape from the mundane times experienced within middle age.
David can no longer watch news information on the giant flat screen hung high in domination within the lodgings. The all-seeing eye, the mouthpiece of some massive conglomeration, programmed to beam progressive ideas, instant messages, sponsored advertising, courtesy of some alien tribe, straight into David’s hideaway. Invited willingly into David’s reality, broadcast media overwhelms all other forms of time spent, no other pastime exists whereby entertainment can be found.
David suffers the slings and arrows of external lectures, cowers behind half closed eyelids in a failing attempt to repel life’s newly minted reality. Hunched shoulders narrow David’s exposure to broadband information overload. Chest concave constructs walled protection against the grabbing at the heart of the man, tugging at the heartstrings, claws emanate from intelligentsia’s all-knowing cloud. Back bowed as a shield to sharp jabs of judgement, death by a thousand cuts.
David moves quickly among the masses as a shrunken version of his decaying best self, attempting invisibility to the laser focus of the social media scope, the call to become one of the new breed. David knows that he must hide his misbelief, retreat inside a dying worldview so common one short decade past. A time when a majority of humankind met a low bar of being. A time where those uninitiated and without influence were blindly happy with their fostered freedom to think of themselves as content.
David worries endlessly. David needs to pay ever more to maintain a capitalist sponsored power source in order to live this low life in a stranglehold unavoidable for the masses today. David must keep that ever more expensive roof above his head and put that ever more ethnically biased, price inflated, food on his crooked, chipped tabletop. David must afford the non-negotiable planet salvation doctrines, now innovations, brought forth and cemented by big business. David must find the monies to pay the ever-increasing tax burden supporting governmental waste and virtue signaling. David cannot bring himself to hate his true self in perpetuity that the media demands of him. David is white. David was born male. David tasted success after university. David made a home with his wife and parented his children toward maturity bound by his father’s rules of past times morality, his experienced belief in effort equals reward. David has earned his place, paid his way, diligently, dedicatedly, now discovered dishonestly. David is a non-human of new times.
David realized late that he was a misogynist. David never knew that he was racist. David is a carnivore who has grown strong consuming cow mother’s milk. David never knew that he could be fluid in all feelings and chemistry and biology. David misunderstood how working his way to Friday was suffocating the dreams of others. David, destroyer of Earth, innocent plastics consumer following the uptake revelation that the paper packaging of last century guaranteed the loss of Amazon rainforests. David, so naive in the belief for leading with his learned belief system. David is the victim of actions genetically transferred through generations of familial struggle to rise. David is new to a world where he is wrong in all thought processes. David is a virgin in a new world of sexual identity. David is bowed to the newfound injustices of past generations. David has not embraced the new history written today with no consideration for the reality of the then and the when. David did not know that Big Brother of 1984 would come as an app on his communication device. Watching and judging, sermonizing, and degrading him via all channels on his gogglebox.
David is devastated by the cancelling proposal of the new realization, where all his life and the long past lives of his ancestors are recorded now as a disgrace to modern humanity. David has been wrong for 56 evil years. David will be wrong for the rest of his life journey. Blindly navigating new maps with no known destination and an erased outline of roads travelled.
David can no longer think freely, not without reference to the screen of truth. David shrivels into a rotten ball of grey skin, buried, hidden deep within a malodorous armchair, retreated to a dark corner of despair. David is broken, beaten, beyond hope of himself.
David takes a walk.
Alone.
David enjoys singularity within a discovered walking world. David has found a new reality on the track, off the grid and outward bound. David can be his true self David here. David cannot be judged by technology here. David can believe, achieve, admire on the footpaths.
David takes to the Camino de Santiago Compostela.
Davey takes The Way of Saint James.
Dave discovers the tracks toward peace without an insistence that he believes in God or media or influence.
Davo discovers a closure in his mind and ability to listen to his soul.
David James Polkington can be his best self in his own way.
DJP may allow his own belief structures to bubble to the surface of his own mind.
Over 850 kilometers of walking forever west over mountain high through valley low, David is David.
David falls in love with existence at its most basic. Water for his day. Food for his fuel. Shoes to propel him onward 15 or more miles per day. Always a goal to fulfill. Any act of kindness is a gift to himself.
This guy walks to a new place, a new self, a new beginning.
David is alive.
A Man can be happy in himself, for himself, of himself, toward himself.