Dreaming of an Equilibrium - short story (kind of)

He stood by as the world passed him.  It wasn’t that he couldn’t move, it was that he  chose not to.  No one understood what Dillon really wanted out of life, but it wasn’t their fault that he never let it on.  He liked the simplicity of standing still, of dreaming in place, and he tried his best to stay positive in his immobile state.

Once upon a time he had momentum a real energy to his life, a forward motion if you will pressing up the small of his back to go where dared not, and his toes dug deeply into the earth leaving a trail of futile resistance.  

On a particular day in September he read it in in the headlines first, and saw the evidence all around him.  DESPAIR.  He had tried so hard to ignore it, the pending doom, the dread of a revolving aging planet.  It wasn’t the end of the world, but the world wanted it to be the end.  He saw the suicidal tendencies of society dragging at him, anchoring him in deeper to his frozen pedestal.  He didn’t like it, at one time somewhere in his past he had the satisfaction of being a wallflower on the outside, doing nothing but observing, but now it seems this whole planet earth had stopped spinning.  It’s revolutions continued, but its inhabitants chose to withdrawal and ignore everything around them.  

The skies were blue, the air was gentle, and yet no one noticed, it may have been overcast, foggy, and cold as everyone huddled in a mass of recluse.  Where he was once the only hermit, now hermits sprouted up everywhere.  The headlines didn’t help, the media called for people to live, but showed and told story after story of why they shouldn’t.  There was so much good to experience they claimed, but in a shower of caution and fear they bombarded them mostly with chaos, death, brooding, and lies.  

Dillon walked deliberately to his car, each step weighted down with foreboding, and he looked about him.  His suburbia home a clone of all the others, he a clone of all the others.  Or, were they a clone of him.  He felt lost in the common mindset, he needed a new start.

Perhaps he was a chain in a pattern, perchance he could break it if he just switched to what was once their view.  Maybe if he could switch his pessimism for optimism, maybe then he could achieve something wonderful.  Individuality.  Maybe then a harmony would return and he could then return to his original comatose state, maybe, just maybe.