Oh I’m trying so hard. So, so hard.
Everybody has their own inner battles that they wage. It’s not necessarily negative. I think there is such a thing as waging a good battle (fighting for the better thing over the simply good thing - not the worst thing in the world, right?). I’m still working on what kind of battle this one is. So far I’m neutral on it.
I read an interesting discussion this afternoon regarding intelligent people and depression. Not scientific, just people shooting the shit. Someone said, “What if the world actually sucks and intelligent people just see it for what it is?” I think it has validity. Life is meaningless and absurd. And of course that is a core tenet of existentialism, a philosophy I happen to embrace. I think once someone realizes the meaninglessness, there’s a sort of existential crisis of, “Now what?”
That’s where I am right now. That’s where I’ve been for the past few months. Suddenly I’ve got this responsibility of making my life worth something, because it isn’t inherently worth anything at all. The problem is that I’m a lazy thinker. I don’t want to figure out a meaning for myself! That’s hard! I’d much rather have someone tell me what life means. It kills me that I know it’s not possible.
It makes me wish I could buy into religion. Religion would make it easier. Unfortunately I’m too far gone for that.
So now I’m trying to be the change I need for myself. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I swing from hope to hopelessness in a matter of days. Hours, even. And when it hits hopeless it’s all the more bitter because I’m in that state where I’m blatantly aware of how empty it all is, and how it doesn’t matter if I’m hating how empty it is because it is what it is and nothing more. I’m walking a tightrope with no net.
And that’s why it’s slightly hopeful, too. The upside to that - if you can believe there is one - is that if I slip from the rope, there’s no ground to hit. Because there’s nothing. I could just fall and fall and fall and fall until I just stop falling. If life is nothing, life is anything I make it. It’s somewhat like lucid dreaming, I guess. I’m falling into nothingness until I just miraculously create a new tightrope out of thin air - why? because I want to and I can - and it’s like I was never falling in the first place. It’s constant reinvention.
Within reason, anyway.
The thing holding me back from letting me fall for as long as I want is society itself. There are norms and expectations of me, so I have to find that balance between caring too much and not caring enough of what other people think. This is tricky because I firmly believe that other people are what make us who we are. Society does. It’s hard to see when you’re in the midst of it - is the fish aware it’s wet, after all? - but it’s there. I know it is because I have brief, flickering moments of awareness where I’m just like, “I wouldn’t give a shit about any of this if nobody told me it was important.”
If society never existed, if nothing but me existed in the world, what would it be like? I’d walk around naked and just chill. I wouldn’t feel judged. I wouldn’t know what judgement is. I’d be like, “Oh cool, a rock. Look at that lake. I’m gonna go eat food.” And I’d eat all I want and get really fat (or not; “fat” would not be a concept) and get eaten by a lion or something because I’d be stupid and try to pet it. It might be a short life, but I bet it would be the freest life I could ever live.
Would I know what depression is? Jealousy? Shyness? Would I feel like I’m failing to measure up? Doubt it.
So maybe the goal is to figure out how to live like I’m the only person who ever existed.
