Sit grim on the metro as the sun is rising and glance around comparing each other’s importance. Silently mock the student and waiter who are wearing synthetic clothes while you tap your leather shoes and sniff your woollen scarf. 

Walk quickly through the station, clicking your tongue every time someone throws you off your step. Mount the escalator and stare at the dirt collected on the coat in front of you. Worry about the dream you had where you spent too much money. Was it a dream? 

Walk very quickly checking your watch because time is money and money is capital. You can catch the fleeting seconds in your hand before the clock takes them. Check your phone to see your importance. You are satisfied in the things done, but the list is endless. 

Talk animatedly into the phone at the office. There is no reason to talk calmly. Make jerky movements in the meeting as you make sure you express your importance, because you are not essential. Make two contradictions, one recommendation, and if time allows, a mild rebuke. Your importance has been established. 

At lunch talk only about work as though still working – rhythm is good. Make several complaints against the manager. Give your colleagues a catalogue of your difficulties and how important they are. Eat hurriedly, while texting your spouse, lover, child, nurse, nanny, horse trainer, etc. Ignore the catalogues of difficulties from your colleagues. Interrupt them with unrelated anecdote. Cite the internet. 

A sunbeam hits the keyboard but you slam your digits into the keys, the passions of youthful promise squandered. Look up to the window and the sun and contemplate life without civilisation, living in caves. But these rhythms, these people, these organisations these buildings, are all total. With renewed enthusiasm, complete your report.

Analyse data. Make proud assumptions that man is predictable like a rat in a maze.

Begin to dream about dinner, beach, TV series, horse, children, etc., the moments are beginning to drag as the day-flower withers. Produce a smile because the manager is giving you another project. You’ll finish late again. You conclude it’s meaningless. You dream about being a heroic hunter. 

Astonished at entering your apartment, you sigh and jangle your keys mercilessly, to signify self-importance. You greet your familiars of man and animal and signal your fatigue. You ignore the harvest moon shinning through the gap in the curtain, with its far removed agrarian potential. Instead you mention your difficulties and ignore theirs. You make for the sofa putting a cat, child or pizza on your lap as you yawn at the collapse of the day. You reassert that your lost labour was essential. You begin a list in your head of projects. But the accounts don’t add up. The cat purrs, the child whines, the pizza is gone. You dream of being a warrior that saves the village. Your importance is secure.

You lay down in bed and begin the solemn review of the day. Your thoughts split like leaf veins between success and failure. You consider todays achievements first, but you are eager to get to the disappointments. You conclude nothing. Then you have the same dream about flight until finally your importance is defeated by sleep.