Underground — Monday, July 20, 2026.

This remark is part of the Europe 2026 Trip.

I needed to take the metro today, and I just couldn't keep thinking about how I haven't accepted my mortality while doing so. I had believed to having achieved it once, but I became too proud and fixated on the world and my life. There are a couple of reasons why, I think, the underground stations reflect some spiritual and metaphysical truths about or world and lives.

The liminality of the stations themselves, an overload of publicitary information, electrical escalators that rise without end giving out skewed perspectives. Modern society does not incentivize us to question the predefined, but having seen this I can't help and ask, who even thought of building the city's biggest public transport system underground?

The metro feels like a rehearsal for my death. It begins to accelerate, accumulating speed and noise. I wouldn't call it a peaceful or enjoyable ride, and it all ends quickly, just as it started. Without anything really gained, only a few uncomfortable minutes of your life. Suddenly, I remember how the ancient Hebrew concept of God was that of a deity that banished his most important and loyal followers from existance. There wasn't a reward like heaven, all a believer could hope for was to be left alone forever, in inexistence (sheol), not even being able to worship their God...

I'll just say that this is a first-world country, very developed. However I don't see its people being happier or enjoying their lives more. All I see are citizens that smoke too much and socialize too little. It makes me think of an airport, where everyone is crammed into a small space and trying to get out of there as quickly as possible, whatever the "getting out" hyperbole might mean... If this is the future humanity is heading to, I'd rather humanity not have a future at all.