Chairs

I woke up this morning convinced that chairs are a scam.

Not in a metaphorical sense nor in a philosophical way. I mean physically: wood, plastic, metal, all of them. It’s a conspiracy of posture.

Think about it: who decided that bending your body into a 90-degree angle for hours is “rest”?

That’s not rest. That’s origami with bones. Somewhere along the line, we accepted discomfort as structure and called it civilization.

And the worst part? Chairs have hierarchy.

There are good chairs and bad chairs and chairs that pretend to care about your spine while quietly plotting its downfall. Office chairs whisper false promises. Plastic chairs at events feel like a temporary punishment. And then there’s that one chair, the “important” chair, that only exists so one person can sit higher than everyone else. Thrones. Executive seats. Podium stools. Chairs aren’t just furniture. They’re power with legs.

We don’t talk about that enough, because once you notice it, you start seeing chairs everywhere. Meetings? Chairs. Classrooms? Chairs. Waiting rooms? Marketplaces? Chairs.

Rows of controlled sitting.

Standing up suddenly feels rebellious. Like you’ve broken an unspoken agreement.

Sit down, they imply

Sit down and stay within your assigned rectangle of existence.

Don’t expand, don’t question, don’t sprawl, don’t take up space that wasn’t pre-approved by furniture.

And we obey. We really do.

We even decorate the cages. The cushions, the ergonomic curves and oh let’s not forget the lumbar support. We say things like “this chair understands my back,” which is exactly the kind of sentence you’d expect from someone who’s been psychologically negotiated with by an inanimate object.

Here’s where it gets worse: we take chairs home. After spending entire days being arranged by them, we return to our personal chairs like they’re trusted companions. “My spot,” we call it. 

As if the chair didn’t assign itself to you first. As if it didn’t slowly train your body to fit it like a mould

And don’t even get me started on how long we stay in them. Hours upon hours.

But sometimes I wonder what would happen if we just… stopped.

If meetings had no chairs. If classrooms were built for movement instead of compliance. If waiting didn’t automatically mean sitting. Would we think differently? Would conversations stretch instead of compress? Or would we panic?

Because here’s the uncomfortable possibility: it’s not just the chairs. It’s what they represent.

I call it structure.

Chairs didn’t force us to become like this. They just made it easier.

And now we’ve gone so far that even rest feels structured. You don’t just lie down, you optimise it.

We turned existing into a performance, and chairs got front-row seats.

Actually, no, they are the stage.

So yeah, I don’t trust chairs.

And anyway, I stood up while writing this.

It felt illegal.