God, don’t you ever feel like you’re wasting your life?
I don’t know what I’m meant to be doing – travelling, experiencing, or whatever – but whatever it is I’m not doing it. I don’t feel like I’m living in the right place, even. I’d rather live in the Scottish Highlands, if I had the choice. Instead I’m stuck in the subtropics, dreaming of snow and crisp mornings. I couldn’t afford a house if I sold half my organs. I don’t know what it means to live a life. I rather suspect no one does. That everyone is desperately working so as to avoid thinking about it.
I asked a friend of mine, who knows philosophers, whether there is one who has a recommendation on how to not waste one’s life. He said they would all spend 20 years arguing about what the statement means, which sounds like the waste of a life if I ever heard one. According to my chum, “Camus would say as long as you’re not committing suicide you’re good, and even then only maybe”. Thanks, Camus.
On the other hand…
The inherent meaninglessness of life is, in a way, a curiously freeing thing. I’m not meant to be anywhere. I’m not meant to do anything. There’s nothing in this world that requires me to have succeeded at x and y by age z. I can do what I want, when I want to do it. The only restriction – and yes, it’s significant – is money. Within one’s means, all one can do is enjoy life while it lasts. I am free. No one may trap me with their expectations.
In such a frame of mind, doing nothing at all is both exquisite hedonism and outright protest. I cannot waste my life.
Perhaps Camus was onto something, after all.