Escaping the World
I keep seeing them in the news lately. Algorithm things because the truth is, in real life, I've never seen any. At first, I even thought it was a joke. I'm referring to therians: people who have decided that their ontological identity is not human, in simpler terms, that they base their identity on animals like dogs, cats, crocodiles and, therefore, feel entitled to act accordingly. The first thing I felt when I heard about them was laughter, then tremendous curiosity. They reminded me of a beautiful story by Italo Calvino that tells the story of a twelve-year-old boy named Cosimo who, after arguing with his parents because he doesn't want to eat the snails served for dinner, decides to climb a tree and never come down again. During his arboreal life, he lives incredible adventures that, at nine years old, inspired me to do the same, although in my case, I wanted to become a bird. I could have been the precursor to therians if I hadn't gotten bored half an hour after climbing the highest branch of an immense eucalyptus. More than enough time to realize that pretending to be a bird was not only uncomfortable but tremendously boring because I only wanted to fly and eat chocolates, and given my circumstances, I could do neither.
