Time to Think
Have you ever caught yourself sitting at the table, eating dinner with someone you hold dear, and yet instead of enjoying the flavors, the smell, and the company, you are not really there? Your mind is somewhere else, thinking about work or what you will do next, doing this over and over without really realizing it?
This is what most people call autopilot, and sadly, it does not affect only people's dinners, but people's entire lives as well. I myself have committed this sin many times, working day in and day out, just having the days pass by while I'm not really present to notice.
Thankfully, my brain has developed a mechanism to notice this after some time and stop the autopilot. However, every time I realize that I am on autopilot, I get sad with myself. "Oh, I did it again," I say to myself, and I promise that I will stop trying to get into autopilot. However, as I grew older, the autopilot was becoming more and more overpowering. Each second you spend doing something "just because others told you that you need to" is a second you train your autopilot more and more; be this by working a 9-to-5, consuming shallow media, or simply not questioning what you are doing with your life.
Because of this ever-growing autopilot, I am now trying to actively stop myself from getting into it and being more present. I have yet to create or find a good method for doing this, but being conscious and trying to ask myself questions seems to be a good option. Also, writing, since writing obligates you to put abstract thoughts into organized words that you might not otherwise be aware of.
This is good for me. However, when I look into other people's lives, I get scared, since most of the people around me appear to either not want to get out of autopilot or not realize they are in it in the first place. On the internet, it's normal, but what scares me are the people that I know IRL.
What do other people think about?
Being in Japan is strange. I often see people on the street, and here, the younger ones (usually teens and younger adults) are behaviorally very different from adults. You can see their spark, their aspirations, and their dreams. And when you look at their adult counterparts, you see the toil of work and the autopilot that took everything away.
Because of this, I always catch myself thinking about people who are visibly just "making life go by." I wonder what is going on in their heads, what their aspirations were, what their early days were like. How is their life? And I catch myself thinking this more than once because, at the end of it, each person has a multiverse behind their eyes, even if it has been sealed away by current society.
The auto-pilot
There is a brilliant movie casting Adam Sandler called Click in which the main protagonist of the film is given a controller that can skip parts of his life that he does not want to do - such as daily routines or having a fight with his wife.
The protagonist uses and abuses that and starts to get focused on the "having" and "achieving" (a.k.a. desires) of life rather than "being" - This causes the MC to skip ahead 10 years in the future when he would be successful.
Because of his actions (or, in this case, inaction), he is rich and very successful, but at the cost of his family, his time, and now his life. In the end, all he has left is a lot of regrets and the wish that he could go back and do everything again, this time focusing on the things that actually mattered.
As much as this movie is criticized for being, well, "too Adam Sandler," it stuck with me, and to this day it gives me an existential crisis just thinking about it, since one of my biggest fears is going through life on autopilot, trying to finally achieve what I want, finally being able to "be" (for example, being free through financial independence), only to realize that I skipped life entirely. It burdens me how most people live this way, occupying and toiling themselves trying to survive and accumulating some money only to, at the end, die poor and with regrets.
Conclusion
I'm very sorry, enlightened viewer, if my line of thinking is too little emotional or too raw. I'm still not used to writing, but I started this blog to perfect that and to get this anxiety about autopilot out of my chest. In the end, there is no "BIG" change that we can make to get rid of the autopilot problem. Just start to plan your days around what you want to do (and trust me, you don't want to keep working for someone or consuming endless media). Try to build your days toward getting there. Try having hobbies, being present, and going out with friends. And most of all, do not take yourself nor life too seriously. Life is only one; it's better to enjoy it than to waste it in regret.
Remember, friends, don't you dare go Hollow.