It's a Metaphor

Imagine you're on the beach level of a video game. You can't leave the beach, you can't go out to sea too far, and anytime you stretch the limits you find some explicit or implicit barrier prevents you from going far in any direction. It doesn't matter whether it's an invisible wall, an "endless", treadmill illusion, or simply strategic rock formations - you're trapped, and you're going to die unless and until you achieve some objective as-yet unknown to you.

And then you see someone else. "Finally, someone that will be able to help me!" you think. You start to talk with them and find that they're in the same predicament that you're in. After awhile you notice several other people. Everyone is trying to escape, and obviously it would be better if you all worked together.

So you start to work together and you all quickly discover that the nature of the beach level is to constrain you totally in this square of existence, and that it's exquisitely effective at that task. So then everyone starts bickering about where in the rock formations to dig, where to dive, where to test the infinite wall's height. You have a theory about a rock or two, and you get involved with the bickering.

And you go away for a few days to think. Hunger and thirst are apparently not going to happen to you, so you have some time to think, in a distant corner of the beach level. You think and you think. You get some promising ideas about an escape. And, most of all, you start to watch your companions more closely.

Every couple of hours they switch to a new place to dig and a new set of things to bicker about. "We should be looking for a key!" "No, we should be looking for a raft!" You seem intrigued and ask all of them if they have any basis for these statements. Every single one of them say that they just woke up here randomly, as you did. They are just as clueless as you. And yet they have such confidence in their theories about where to dig.

After awhile they've exhausted every spot and done a multitude of things every which way, and go randomly from place to place. They talk about which spots are overrated and which spots are underrated: that is, as possible means of escape. They talk about which spots are important to the larger narrative of leaving. They talk about which spots they must visit before they die. They talk about how great it is to just enjoy crags of cliffs that no one else in the level has ever experienced. Just to sit there and be the only person that has ever sat there. They mark out their favorite spots to chisel away at ironically, knowing it's futile. They mark out their favorite shallow spots to wade and the deepest spots that they can reach. The taller people brag about the depths they're capable of standing in. The more athletic brag about the roughness of waves they can endure and still tread water. A few people laugh at anyone that even goes into the water because being wet isn't any fun at all. Much more fun to soak up the perfectly comfortable and unchallenging sun.

You saw all of this and wanted to scream. But you're not there anymore. You went to the center of the level, examined it, and found a little glitch in the sand in the form of a gap. It was obvious if you paid attention to where you were and walked around without any pretensions or preconceptions. Whoever'd developed the video game'd also developed some signals pointing to that point if you were looking for them. The sky and the earth and the sea all converged on this point. It was a heart-shaped gap and you didn't think twice. You jumped in and escaped forever.

And for all intents and purposes you won: But you weren't out of the woods, yet. You landed at a computer in the real world and saw some think-pieces and music criticism. You got sucked in and stayed at the computer for hours, reading and getting angrier about all the supposed "trends" of our modern culture, as dictated for you by self-appointed gatekeepers and "experts". It made you goddamn sick. It took quite a while for you to center yourself and find that heart-shaped gap again, but once you did, you felt happy again. And then you got something to eat, because boy were you hungry!