This riddle– ”life has no purpose” –is one that isn’t so easily solved for a single man, well into middle-age, who has few if any friends and is more or less alone in the world. He came to this point neither by mistake nor overnight.
He has a little money, so he attempts to shake things up by quitting his job (which he didn’t like all that much anyway) and “letting it all hang out”: doing the things he enjoys, living like a retiree; basically trying to “prime” his life like a pump–pouring a little happiness in from the outside to see if that will get the happiness going inside.
He tries. He prays. He allows his love for a woman to have a purchase in his life even though she doesn’t meaningfully reciprocate. He gets professional help and gets on a strong daily dose of psychotropic drugs. He gets involved in his community. He starts to write a book. He tries engagement groups. He makes improvements in his life: fixes up and redecorates his home. He treats himself to special “gifts”: a new stereo for his pickup truck, some new suits, et-cetera, et-cetera. He takes long walks on the dead-early-mornings (which is a 20-minute walk away) at least once and usually twice a day.
He knows that he “has it made,” and just about everybody else in the whole world would kill to be in his situation.
But it’s not so simple. He was a “problem child” who grew into a “problem adult”: clinically depressed and most definitely not really plugged into the same reality as most others. He doesn’t understand most of what he sees and hears.
He’s very highly educated, very talented, has a “gifted” IQ and is accomplished in three different professions. He was earning his own way before he could read and is no stranger to hard work. He’s worked for three years and gone to distance-study simultaneously.
He has pro-actively tried to find a solution to this life-long issue. He’s religiously attended spiritual group meetings. He’s tried to “make something happen.”
But it hasn’t worked. When he was younger he could bounce back; tomorrow always had a promise. But he’s approaching his mid 50s now, and tomorrow has broken all of its promises. He’s tried it all: “positive mental attitude,” “get busy to get better,” et-cetera, et-cetera, et-cetera, and he’s still pushing that same boulder up that same mountain, and he’s tired: tired of trying and failing, and the only thing that keeps him putting one foot in front of the other and plodding aimlessly through life is his basic, organic will to survive: the same thing that makes single-celled organisms eat and reproduce.
What’s the solution? How about a fling with a younger woman? How about a long trip? How about a job working as a school teacher or an amateur lecturer ?
He figures he ought to just go back to work, but he can’t find a reason why he should. He’s standing at reality’s porous border, and he feels like he could take one little step and fade into unreality without anyone noticing. He knows he could die in his redecorated, fixed-up home and nobody would know until his body started to decay and stink.
He’s afraid to have faith because he’s had it before. He’s afraid to “make something happen” because he’s done that before with really bad results. When he prays that God’s “will be done,” he wonders exactly what he’s bringing on because God’s will, which is not always kind to human beings, is beginning to scare him.
He’s not suicidal, but dying seems so easy and living seems so hard.
He sees that things are important to other people: tasks to accomplish, goals to reach, people to see. He feels he must be missing something as plain as the hand on the end of his arm. He will see it any day now . . . any day now.
When life has no purpose–when life really has no purpose–all the well-worn platitudes in the world won’t work. A man can hack his own path or build his own bridge through life, but if he hasn’t a place to go, and he keeps hacking and/or building anyway, thinking a place–a destination–will emerge, but one doesn’t, well, he stops. He puts down his tools, and he looks around and tries to make some sense out of all he has done and all that has happened to him, and finds it makes no sense at all. If he had never existed, that’d be one less grain of sand on an endless beach, and what difference would that make?
~ “A person needs a little madness, or else they never dare cut the rope and be free” ( Nikos Kazantzakis )
