Joy

In the beginning, many things made me happy.

When I just started my programming career at the age of 22, my first job was very far from ideal. I had to commute for an hour and be there at 9 AM sharp. I often ate my dinner right at my working desk… Gosh, the backend was written in Delphi and that says a lot. A lot. But anyway, I was writing code! No matter what was the purpose of my work—it wasn’t bad, just slightly boring—I was doing actual programming!

When I was a teenager and picked a book to read, I was almost trembling with excitement. I didn’t plan to read a certain number of pages, nor did I have a plan to cover a given subject—I just had that one specific book in my lap and I would read it, intentionally missing my bus stops, skipping lessons at school, and hiding with a flashlight in my bed at night.

Going with my friends on our small adventures thrilled me to the core, and I would spend nights drinking beers just for the fun of it, only to nap for an hour at dawn and then immediately set out on our next quest. That might have often been stupid and reckless, but I felt genuinely happy and hungry for life.

Then something occurred, and I let that something suck the joy out of the things I loved so dearly. I was gradually succumbing to it, year after year. I was optimistic of mind but desperate of spirit. I did work I didn’t want to do, securing the future I didn’t want to live. Then the war happened, and the trajectory of my life took the sharpest turn ever. For that, I am forever grateful to the Norns.

Now, some time after that big calamity, I can clearly see the culprit. Its name starts with an R and ends with an M and has 11 letters in it.

You’ve likely guessed correctly. Rationalism had seeped into my life like a fine poison. Through the tech blogs, popular science videos, and wise-looking books, I was absorbing not only the sophisticated and often useful tooling, not only the methods of reasoning that would make me smarter and more efficient at mundane tasks. I also intoxicated myself with the meekly, cowardly spirit. I got inebriated with the indecisiveness that comes from the notion of never being knowledgeable enough, and therefore never being at full capacity to act.

I spoiled my soul with the fear of death.

Yet everything ends, and my time of twilight has come to an end as well. I am reclaiming my happiness, my vigor, and my mortality. I am becoming once more the man I have always been destined to be.

Today, I stumbled onto a sword-fighting school. And there was joy to that.