So, what happens when you suddenly discover your biological imperative to survive has become overshadowed by the realization that, after decades of struggle, that you have nothing more than an endless, mindless labor ahead? What do you do when can no longer justify your own carbon footprint? Or your own sewer bill? You wake up the every morning with nothing more to look forward to than waking up the next day. Being told we must live a ‘purpose-driven life’ is mathematically impossible. Even with infinite compassion and complimentary disposable income, with 6.6 billion people on the earth, there simply aren’t enough purposes to go around. Purposes are those with the means. For everyone else, the reward for survival is drudgery.
Hours in front of the TV, Jesus, or cases of beer haven’t improved your life. Logic would dictate that if one wants to begin enjoying their life, they must either change what they enjoy (unlikely), or change their life. Of course, there are those who have left this game. You leave your job, family, home, whatever- and do what you want. Sometimes it leads to genius- a new company, a new industry, a new life. These were the lucky ones. Unfortunately, luck isn’t universal. Those who are ‘going-for-theirs’ usually end-up picking-up a gun and screwing everyone else. This is the last-ditch effort to keep from starving in the street, upon discovering you weren’t a ‘lucky’ one after all. Fun while it lasts, I suppose. It usually ends badly. Unfortunately, the vast majority of those who’ve left finally ended their sojourn to self-fulfillment just as they began it- in nothingness. No glory, no success, no public humiliation, no hail of gunfire; just the inevitable fade in the grey fog of inconsequentiality.
Solutions? Watching “Fight Club” until I pass-out doesn’t’ solve anything. I’ve never been lucky, and violence only seems to increase the net suffering of the world. How about a great Roosevelt-ish public works project? Most of us have shit-jobs now; Why ask for another? Suicide may seem the only answer left, but that’s the cowards way out. It helps no one. Although death would be preferable to endless years of pulling someone else’s plow, it completely defeats the purpose. The idea is not to end your life, but to begin it.
I don’t know what’s happened to our western society to cause this. Living in the mountains skinning elk would seem like a vacation now. I don’t have a solution, but I know someone does and they don’t live near me. All I know is that I need that solution…and quickly. The sewer bill is due again.
