Is my table happy to be one
My table is round and can extend into a six-people sized surface if necessary. It’s only job is to look aesthetic, stand there, and act as a placing area for keys, food, and dishes. Never have I demanded money from it for staying inside my apartment; instead I clean it every day, polish it with oil every now and then, and receive complements from my friends and family for it. What a nice table! It can extend so smoothly! That’s all. Does it need to go to work, move, breathe? Trees convinced us that they would be of much better use if we shaped them and kept them warm and cozy in our homes, and that the outside is just too cold in winters and moist on rainy days.
I wouldn’t use them as backpacks by placing my laptop, keyboard and mouse, and my charger on it to lift it to the train station. Neither would I talk to it or expect it to comfort me when I am not feeling well. If I didn‘t like how it looks, I wouldn’t blame the table for it, but the designer for doing a bad job. If it broke or got scratches, I would accuse anyone but itself, and might buy myself a better one once I had more money. Never would I walk up to the fucking table and cast my own anger and frustration on it’s inability to meet up to my expectation – only a lunatic would do that.
Trees aren’t even racist! If you grew into a fir tree, noone would suggest bottoming their living room with you. Instead, you would be chopped from the bottom, taken into a comfy home, and decorated with fancy ornaments as a christmas celebration. If your wood is not strong enough to be shaped into solid wood furniture, you will be pressed into veneered shapes. Unless people pay for the designer, it’s unlikely that you would be sold at an unusually high price – making you a great sell for people with lower income. How glad you will make the undergraduate student that finally gets to experience freedom and independence in their first studio apartment?
Does that make a happy life? Do trees long for more? Are they aware of their limits? Are they sad about it? Do trees wish they could fly or chew? I wish I knew what I am, so people would fucking stop expecting me to do things I am not capable of doing. Sometimes I feel like a table, but the kind that gets forced into running to the office and solving complex problems. How crazy would my counterpart feel if they knew I am actually a table. Let me fucking sit in my cozy home and do what I’m supposed to do.
The frustrating thing about it is I don’t know what I am. How the fuck am I supposed to figure it out if I keep myself busy 24/7 on every fucking second of my day.