Road to Nowhere

I sometimes dream of a motorcycle ride. I'm on a winding road, with thick green cover on both sides. A cool — yet somehow warm — breeze is blowing, and my favorite playlist is on loop. As I ride into a clearing, sunlight slowly creeps in — the kind that just makes you feel warm, at ease. For a moment, I'm free.

  With each gear shift, the weight I carry — the ache, the doubt, the noise of a world too loud for my quiet questions — begins to loosen its grip. The headlines, the performative joy, the hollow celebrations of things I can’t relate to — they all dissolve in the hum of the engine. And with each turn, something fades. The awareness, the ache, the hopelessness — they start to fall away, piece by piece. All that matters now is the road, the wind, the song, and the engine’s hum. Maybe this is my rebellion. Maybe this is my escape. 

  I hope this ride helps me forget the burning worlds — the hunger that devours the nameless, the children lost to wars they never started, all sacrificed to feed the egos of old men and to fill their endless pockets. I hope that, for a while, I forget what I know. That I don’t see what we all can plainly see but choose not to. I hope I become a little more ignorant, a little more forgetful, maybe even a little less human.

  And I hope I can forget, at least for a moment, the way people feed off the weak, how those meant to serve often end up strangling the ones they swore to protect. I hope I forget the faiths turned into weapons, their altars turned into slaughterhouses of truth and humanity. I want to forget the endless pursuit of things never meant to last — titles, medals, likes, validation. And I want to forget this alienation I feel in rooms filled with noise, where I can hear every word, yet understand none of it. I hope I no longer have to wear this mask — the not-so-horrible student, the not-too-rebellious citizen, the not-entirely-crazy family member. I hope I can exist without calibrating myself for the world. Without disguises, without titles that try to gauge my worth.

  For now, I only dream of this ride. For now, I will wear meaningless neckties and pointless blazers, doing things that seem to hold little meaning in the grand scheme of things. But between the meetings, between the chores, between a shared silence and a laugh that still feels real, I hope I find it in me to resist — to resist the quiet pull of numbness, the slow drift into apathy, the entropy that gnaws at meaning. I hope I find it in me to stand for what is right, to speak up when it matters, and to be kind — to everyone, and everything.

  Maybe that’s all any of us can hope for — a final, dream‑like ride to close the act of our weary existences. I hope one day I find my perfect bike ride. Until then, I helplessly hope that the thought of it — that road to nowhere — will be enough to keep me going.