I DON'T Wanna Live an NPC Life
I just read this article about wanting to be an NPC this morning. While I agree with the premise they seem to be going for, I disagree with the message.
I honestly kinda hate this rhetoric of people being main characters, side characters, npcs, whatever. Because it distills humans to some superficiality or dehumanization.
To me, to be an NPC is to be shallow. It's not a matter of not giving a fuck, it's being completely stripped of any and all individuality. Your life isn't of your choosing, it's pre-determined, pre-programmed. You have no will, no likes, no dislikes. No backstory. By the very essence that you are alive and have a lived experience, you are not an NPC.
To call upon OPs allegory of the Skyrim blacksmith:
do they care whether or not you slay dragons? no. do they care if you come in and steal all their shit because you pickpocketed them? no way. what do they do? they just keep living their life as a blacksmith—and they’re good at it to whatever level they’re supposed to be, whether they're a master craftsman or the shitty apprentice in the starting town. they do their thing regardless of what you do in the world.
If you steal their shit and you're caught, they call the guards on you. If they're programmed for it, you'll get "I can't believe it, you're dragonborn!" if you kill the dragon. If you murder their wife, they might MIGHT give some token gesture of hating you, but will have no problem buying your junk. They might "do their thing" because they quite literally have no choice. NPCs generally are sycophants or sociopaths.
It shouldn't be any wonder that the NPCs that we remember the most are the ones that have depth and leave an impression through our continued interaction with them. I think of characters like Serana, who won't marry you because they're traumatized by what was done to them. They stick with you and go through this struggle of having to face their shitty parents. It's when the story is over you're sitting there like "that's it?". You get characters like Cicero who have the most oddball personality for an Elder Scrolls game.
By the very nature of your existence, you are the main character of your own story. And like games like Skyrim you can choose to go down the path of a hero, or you can go down the path of someone who just spends the game hunting the wildlife and living off the land, and everything in-between.
But again, this fails to point out that PEOPLE AREN'T NPCS. People aren't autonomous bits of code, mesh, and textures that exist purely for the player's immersion. You don't have a dialogue tree that you can exhaust or be reduced to the infamous spouse dialogue if you get married. We have the will to do what we want.
be an npc. drive a boring car—who gives a fuck? have a boring job. do nothing after work. why do you have to do something after work? do something because you feel like doing it, not because you feel like you have to.
I feel like this paragraph leads too hard into apathy, which is not an admirable trait. People should have something to do after work, because if your entire life is just work and then limbo, social isolation in essence, you're setting yourself up for depression. Encouraging people to have nothing else to be passionate about, nothing to motivate you is... odd. When all you do is work, you cut out things that actually prevent depression, hobbies, friendships, enjoying experiences that leave a lasting memory. I agree that you shouldn't FORCE yourself to do something you don't despise, but that's very different from doing absolutely nothing day-in-day-out. It's also different from doing things you may not like per se, but are absolutely for your own benefit (like exercise). A lack of interest in doing things is usually seen in screenings for depression.
There is something to be said about finding a level of peace in your current circumstance. But if you work a boring job that you don't find any redeeming qualities out of, the answer isn't to just "not give a fuck", change it! If you can't then learn how to find contentment therein, but by all means don't just succumb to a life of apathy. Apathy is part of why we are in this societal-wide mess to begin with.
Please don't misconstrue this as a personal attack on OP. I'm sure they were well meaning, but the advice just seemed off putting to me and seems to flatten what it means to be human. Nobody is going to sit on their deathbed and think "damn, I wish I did less with my life" (unless you're meaning wishing you worked less). I feel like OPs point about wanting to be an NPC is at odds with one of their previous posts where they share their pain about where the world is going.
What OP seemed to miss about their point about it being rehashed stoicism is that it's not just about doing your own thing. Stoics viewed that tomorrow was never a guarantee and to cherish each day. They weren't apathetic, they spoke openly about contributing to human society because to do so is to live in accordance with nature which comes by virtue of humans being social creatures. They spoke to not worry about what you can't control and to focus on things you can control.
I get it, we all can't be the great hero destined to battle some great evil. But we're all characters in a grand story. We may not be a Frodo, but maybe we're a Sam, or a Pippin, or a Gandalf.
All this to say, don't be an NPC. It's okay if your life is stagnant, and theres a humble honor in any of our conditions, but don't think you (or anyone for that matter) are just some NPC. You're not an NPC, you may just be someone who completed their main questline, or has only been doing side quests and has yet to begin their main quest. Nobody should want to live a life that was pre-determined by someone else. Whether you want to be or not, you are a player in the game, we all are.
Life isn't single-player, it's an MMO.
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as of writing this...
Just got home from work. Hit a dispensary to grab some edibles for my mom for when she starts chemo next week. I've been getting into meditation a lot recently and I've been seeing a lot of positive benefits from it in the short time I've been involved with it. I find I have easier (the -ier being key still) control on my ADHD symptoms. I want to keep going with it because I'm curious what else I'll reap from it as I gain more experience. I also started training to be a Court Appointed Special Advocate for children in foster care yesterday and I'm almost kicking myself that I didn't start sooner, because this seems like a really great fit for me. Learned a lot about what a Guardian Ad Litem does and their relationship to the child in the system as well as my role as an extension of the GAL. I'm excited, yet nervous, to take on my first case once I'm done with training.