To my fellow caffeine-fuelled zombies:

            It is ironic how everyone fears [or most of the time secretly wishes] a zombie apocalypse. Isn’t this the apocalypse already? Isn’t this the moment where lifeless human beings roam and dominate the earth— infecting every last living soul until there is nothing left? Is this not it?

            Every time I look through the faces of the crowd every rush hour I can see them: the walking dead. They are everywhere, from the trains to the buses, the streets, schools, hospitals. Even when I look in the mirror…

            I have become one of them.

            Although in pop culture and literature there have been many interpretations of the walking dead— from firstly being popularized by George Romero’s ‘The Night of the Living Dead’ as simply dead people coming back to life as mindless cannibals, then later on evolving into different categories such as viral and supernatural, beings with extreme rage and agility, or sometimes retaining the capacity to do what they used to as humans— the essence of a zombie remains the same: human beings who have lost the ability to reason and the capacity to be aware; human beings with a fully functional body yet a dead consciousness, staying alive for just one purpose— which is staying alive itself.

            In an oversimplification, to become a zombie is to be a mindless beast. And interestingly enough if we look at the logical concept of a human being, which is to be substantial, bodily, living, sentient and rational, to become a zombie is to lose rationality, sentience and the ability to live— to become a mere organism. This implies that a mindless beast is an understatement, for even a beast qualifies as a sentient living organism with its capacity of rationalization the only thing lacking. Being a zombie, essentially, is like being a bacteria—even less— a dead bacteria or, one might say, a mere thing, for the reason that even a bacteria is substantial, bodily and still living.

            Now if we look at the 21^st century human being and assess this creature’s essence according to the logical definition of a human being, one might ask,

            “Does man still pass for being man?”

            If we are to observe the common pattern of life in the modern society, a man is born, raised by his parents or guardians, brought to school to be educated, then afterwards brought to a higher school to be equipped and prepared, graduates, leaves home to live on his own, gets a job, earns, saves, finds a partner, settles down, marries, have offspring, raises them, affords their education, be left after his children grow up, retires and soon after dies—
            Sounds like some basic life cycle to me, nothing significant from other biological organisms.

            All my years in the academe, I have noticed the circular routine nature of being a student. You wake up with the view of the same old ceiling, wear the same old uniform, listen to the same old lecture, do the same old homework, worry for the same old exam. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

            The thing about all these things is that the quarter of our lives, we are forced to understand that everything we do is a preparation for the ‘real world’ or so they call it. A QUARTER OF OUR LIVES for petty preparation. They act as though the world would still continue to revolve tomorrow just so they can waste a quarter of a lifetime in exchange for a role in the society.

            And so when you go to Starbucks or any café for that matter, you’d see students [and hipsters] drowning themselves in coffee. Check the consumption of every energy drink, and it will always be those sleepless students in their all-nighters. Students have learned to rely on caffeine or any other form of synthetic motivation just to get through every day of their predestined lives, waiting for the day when they get to earn their place in the society and escape towards the ‘real world.’

            One thing troubles me however; the summit of a student’s life is not actually the epitome of their existence as human beings as they expect it to be. The undead I have seen amongst the crowd are not actually exclusively students. They are workers, adults, breadwinners, independents, aspirants, parents. The student’s pasture was a lie. There was no sanctuary. There was no escape. There were only more cups of coffee.

            Yet we are here, drinking our share of caffeine, hoping for it to keep us awake, to keep us going through this painfully repetitive existence, desperately waiting for sanctuary… the coffee drinker’s limbo.

            Tell me, what difference does this have from being a zombie? What part of this circular routine needs reason? What part in this predestined life needs sentience? We just live on. Kept alive by this caffeine—

            staying alive to stay alive.

            No apparent reason why.