If you believe you’re unlikely to meet a zombie, you’re wrong. Zombies come by every day, you just don’t know that’s what they are. In fact, several times a day you probably become a zombie yourself but don’t know it. Once you properly learn how to recognize the walking dead, you’ll see them everywhere.
If you can’t spot any, you might be looking for zombies as they’re depicted in movies, with their shuffling gait, arms outstretched, faces falling off, breaking into a shopping mall to eat your brains. Actual zombies are not like that, unless they’re imitating the movies. Their bodies work fine and are indistinguishable from regular people. Their brains function as needed to operate their bodies; but they’re mindless. They go through the motions without conscious awareness of their surroundings or their actions. They’re like robots, rigid and compulsive in their thinking and behavior. They don’t learn from mistakes. They lack that special something that distinguishes them from real humans, often called the soul.
How To Become a Zombie
We’ll get to how to deal with the zombies around you in a bit, but first you’ll want to make sure you’re not one, yourself. As I said, you sometimes are; maybe not right now, but later today you will be. It’s usually temporary. You can easily turn yourself into a zombie by taking a drug. Any drug will do, as long as it alters your consciousness. Once it does that, it changes your personality to whatever it wants you to be.
If you don’t want to use drugs, you can use entertainment. Go to a concert or a club and lose yourself in the music. Play a game and become part of the game. Watch a show or read a book and be so wrapped up in the narrative that you forget you’re not in the story. Attend a rally or a protest and become part of the crowd. Pray and be so moved by worship that you unite with the divine.
If all these methods of becoming a zombie seem benign, that’s because they are, predominantly. In every case, you’re choosing to be a zombie, hopefully at a time and place where you can’t hurt anyone, including yourself. The chief risk is when you do it too often and become addicted to it. An addict is a zombie even when they're not intoxicated by the drug, to the extent that everything becomes about the drug.
The most insidious way of becoming a zombie is out of your conscious control. A zombie within takes over. We all have a zombie hoard inside us, ready to go at any minute. They spring into action when we experience something scary. By that I mean something you’d rather not be conscious of. This can be a trauma, but it doesn’t have to be a huge one. It can be any setback, embarrassment, loss, or state of confusion. When something happens that’s scary, your consciousness runs away and the zombies take over. From that moment until you realize what you’re doing, you think and behave in rigid, stereotypic ways, mindless of the consequences.
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