Aeterna Flamma

A flame. An essential to humanity's survival. In days of yore, humanity relied on the flame for its gentle warmth and capability of illuminating even the darkest caves. As a result, we as humans have held this essential resource close to our being, as if one and the same. It is my firm belief that there lives a flame in all of us and we all, in one form or another, have encountered it.

For me, the first real encounter with such a flame was even before my first year of university. In grade 12, I was merely a kid figuring out his own path to where I would go. I'm no prodigy nor a whiz, but I liked computers and wanted to know more. This passion was the forecast of what was to come. During my study of computers in high school, the flame burned steadily; it was but a mere candle. Only lit when needed and burned only for as long as it needed.

Once I had entered university, things changed. Enrolling in a rigorous and competitive institution opened my eyes to the flames of others. The immense heat their fires gave off was intimidating. Looking back at my candle, it felt like I should also have a big flame. I got excited; I wanted to have the biggest flame out of everyone that I saw. I wanted everyone to know that I would have a fire that burned long and hard. An unstoppable flame that can light even the darkest regions of the heavens!

Through countless trials and learning experiences, my tiny candle had become a bonfire. A source of heat and light big enough to last many long nights and easily replenishable. I was very proud of it. However, when I turned to look around once more, I saw that I was not the only person who had upgraded their flame. Many people around were doing and achieving so many great things! However, that only made me more upset. Why would I be upset when I transformed a candle into a bonfire? What makes others' fires better? WHY CAN'T MY FLAME BE AS GOOD?

Thus, began the arson.

A bonfire is made to last the night. Campers need the warmth so as to not let Jack Frost come and visit. Its primary objective is to be a fuel of survival and not a performance trick. However, my naive self had other plans. In a desperate attempt to match the flame of others, I had decided to abuse my own fire. Make it a spectacle for all to see.

Come one, come all! See how big this fire can get! It can last not just through the night but through several! Ever wanted to feel the heat in the middle of a summer day? No? That's too bad; you will feel it regardless.

In the second year of university, I had forgotten what I had even joined for in the first place. The curiosity and love for the subject I had enrolled in had been reduced to ash. What was there now was a non-renewable source of energy: envy. The idea that I must top everyone around me. Who cares about genuine interest in what they're doing when person A down the hall is making more money than me? What matters is curiosity when person B across the table has accomplishments that level the ground with their weight? It was infuriating. Whoever came close to me, I had to figure out a way to boast about my accomplishments and what I plan on doing. I HAD to prove that I should be in the ranks of those flames who burned as bright as the stars in the sky!

This flame had grown to grandeur. Known as something people should flock to see. I felt enormous pride in that flame. Something that could wow the crowd and also give out lots of heat. It felt cathartic.

By the time this attraction was in full swing, I had finished second year and began my third. I had figured that we should add as much fuel to this fire as possible; why waste such a good opportunity to make the flame even brighter? Take courses because the "successful" people were? SURE! Join clubs and events that I couldn't give two shits about? Why the hell not?! Oh, someone did something cool? Add that to the fire too! This bonfire evolved into a wildfire faster than I could keep it alive; soon it would destroy everything.

Wildfires tend to go unnoticed but can cause heaps of damage if not dealt with swiftly. An unstoppable blaze that can wreak havoc on the homes and lives of the people near it. That was my wildfire. One that started as a candle had now grown out of control... and I had no intention of stopping its rampage.

The winter of my third year, I had been so busy with all the responsibilities that I had swamped on myself that it became a liability to even TRY to figure out what to do. But hey, I have AI now; I can offload some of my tasks to this, right? Who needs to study when I can have AI make me a summary I won't read? Who needs to delve deep into the topics being discussed when I can ask His Highness ChatGPT to bail me out with shallow explanations? As an aside, I started to collect something I called cognitive debt; this is when I have no idea what I'm doing and am not attempting to make even the slightest effort into even trying to understand. Instead, relying on the automaton to live my life for me. This came to bite me in the ass when it came to midterms and exams that semester. It felt like there was nothing in my head, nothing I could produce. The originality of thought and genuineness of action had become a desolate wasteland. A space dead with air that smelled of burned wood. The fire had gone out completely.

The hotter the flame, the quicker it burns. I was under the impression that if I could keep feeding the flame, it would keep going as long as I wanted. But there I stood in the burnt-down remains of the mind that I once knew. All of the characteristics of what was once me had gone out in a blaze of envy. All I had to show for it were the ashes.

I had landed an internship by this point, but it wasn't like what my peers had achieved. It was what I considered to be subpar. With all the distractions gone, with all the people gone, I was left, and after all of that, it was just me. Alone, sitting in a separated cubicle staring at two monitors with an empty expression. "Where had I gone wrong?" I asked myself. "What if we had tried to use something else as fuel?" As if the wildfire wasn't a slow build-up already. No matter what justification I had thought, the situation I was in killed me from the inside out. I was a husk, merely existing to fulfill the wishes of others.

It sucked to sit in those remains. I had thought that this was it. My destiny had arrived and my flame was out. What comes after this? Nothing. I was at my wits' end and nobody was there to help me. I tried to find a way out. "Maybe I could switch jobs," "Maybe I could just quit now and finish school," "Take a look at others and force your way out." These futile attempts at reigniting what wasn't possible were more backing for my mental anguish.

That bonfire that I was once proud of never was relit. It never will be.

However, this is not the end. Far from it. When sitting in the ashes, you tend to look back at what could have been; in that state, I began to reflect. On the harm I caused towards myself and especially towards others. I had thought about what made me choose this path, the choices that led me here. I thought about the people in my life that still had their hands on my back. That was reassuring. To know that I was worth something and that I had not been relegated to garbage was comforting.

Within the rubble of what was the wildfire, I had come to find something. A small flame not bound by any fuel source. Its blaze resonated with the same tenderness that the candle had, but I sensed it had the capabilities of survival of the original bonfire. The light of this flame was astounding, as bright as the afternoon sun.

I write this now with that eternal flame giving life to my actions.