The Sublime Comfort of Oblivion

The gears had stopped, no whirring, no cogs, no steam, just a pace of slow churning; enough to stay conscious. Fedor was ruthlessly doing and seldom scrutinizing. Wealth accumulated from a loan office with obedient and ruthlessly doing employees that he had risen to the top of. Garden immaculate, apartment spotless, business thriving, and Fedor spent his days doing to keep it that way. Fedor had accomplished much, he had become wildly successful in society’s eyes. It had been seven years since Fedor had thought in his simple hardwood oak chair.

Do, work, obey, repeat, agree, conform, fret, repeat, oblivion.

Life had become a tedious circle of waking up, doing, going to bed, and waking up again. Days, months, and years sped by under the oblivion of doing in place of thinking. It’s not that he refused to think, it’s only that he forgot to. So deep did Fedor crawl into the depths of rhythmic, drum beating oblivion that he almost completely lost the notion that life was strange. In fact, he found life very steady and not abnormal at all.

It was a grasshopper that finally snapped him out of it. Beautifully iridescent and unnaturally colossal this grasshopper appeared on Fedor’s papers as he walked from his house to his office. This grasshopper glowed in all its glory, it was truly a wondrous sight. He stared at it. Slowly he saw that it was big. Gradually he saw its unique shifts in color as the sunlight danced off its body. Sluggishly he remembered that these things might be odd. Maybe even out of the ordinary all together. “This grasshopper is what sight has been invented for. I can surely spare a few seconds to look and marvel; to examine without purpose or intent, simply because it is wondrous.” Fedor thought. Finally, he remembered how pleasant and fulfilling thought without purpose is. And he once again began to think instead of do. He began to think instead of obey.

Cogs, steam, revelation, bliss, return, consciousness.

And he shot clean through his oblivion. Tears started to flow from his glassy eyes, truly seeing for the first time in a long time. He cried for the seven wasted years of doing, for the oddity in the world that he had missed, for the time he had lost to oblivion. Strangers gathered around solemnly, struck by such a display of passion in a world of pseudo-passion. The soft-hearted approached and consoled but all Fedor could do was lift his paper on which the grasshopper still stood towards them and gesture.