The main thing in life, I guess, is to have a purpose, a reason to get up in the morning, so to speak. You need to successfully achieve that absurd state of being, the one where you are able to live meaningfully in an essentially meaningless universe.
It probably doesn’t really matter what you do, just so long as you do something that seems like it matters. And presumably, the best way to do that is to have it matter to someone else, so they can convince you that it actually does.
There are lots of ways to do this.
You can aim high and work at a non-profit whose mission is to save the world. You can find satisfaction in the middle with a decent job that pays well enough for you to have fun with family and friends. You can probably even achieve the desired state by bottoming out as a drug addict just so long as you’re addicted enough to care sufficiently about the drugs you’re addicted to.
I myself have had some success in lowering my standards sufficiently so that whatever little bit I do convinces me that it’s enough. The problem with this is that it’s hard to maintain the illusion for very long, especially since the bar inevitably falls lower and lower. As soon as it’s sufficient for maintaining my self-esteem that I, say, do some yoga, clean the house, and read a book on a given day, I find that subsequently, it’s enough to just read a book. And then, soon, it’s a magazine. And then, the newspaper. And before you know it, I try to be satisfied simply surfing cat videos on the web—and even for me, that’s not enough, which requires restarting the process all over again.
They say that the key to happiness in life is to commit to something larger than yourself; I tried devoting myself to LeBron James; sorry to say it didn’t work.
It probably doesn’t really matter what you do, just so long as you do something that seems like it matters. And presumably, the best way to do that is to have it matter to someone else, so they can convince you that it actually does.
There are lots of ways to do this.
You can aim high and work at a non-profit whose mission is to save the world. You can find satisfaction in the middle with a decent job that pays well enough for you to have fun with family and friends. You can probably even achieve the desired state by bottoming out as a drug addict just so long as you’re addicted enough to care sufficiently about the drugs you’re addicted to.
I myself have had some success in lowering my standards sufficiently so that whatever little bit I do convinces me that it’s enough. The problem with this is that it’s hard to maintain the illusion for very long, especially since the bar inevitably falls lower and lower. As soon as it’s sufficient for maintaining my self-esteem that I, say, do some yoga, clean the house, and read a book on a given day, I find that subsequently, it’s enough to just read a book. And then, soon, it’s a magazine. And then, the newspaper. And before you know it, I try to be satisfied simply surfing cat videos on the web—and even for me, that’s not enough, which requires restarting the process all over again.
They say that the key to happiness in life is to commit to something larger than yourself; I tried devoting myself to LeBron James; sorry to say it didn’t work.
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