Often – far too often – I’ll start thinking of a blog post, only to watch it disappear into a swirl of futility. Normally these feelings of pointlessness emerge from the realization that I’ve stumbled into a well-worn groove, already cut deep into the earth by other, more original thinkers. I feel a certain amount of guilt over this: It is our nature as human beings to regurgitate, repeat, and recapitulate. If we are lucky we add infinitesimally to the peregrinations of our predecessors. But even repetition has its place as a tool of reinforcement, or as a reminder of our common history of thought.
There is another level of futility that often keeps me from writing: My own insignificance in the face of an ancient, implacable universe. That modern life requires – hell, insists upon – a certain degree of solipsism, is widely (if quietly) acknowledged by most first-world residents. My occasional inability to nurture a delusion of self-importance whilst typing up some jive for a limited audience is a failure of character that I’m loathe to admit. But I am a defective human being, and I might as well acknowledge it.
I do try to snap myself out of the dumps when they strike. Not by ginning up some higher purpose of existence, or by convincing myself that I have anything to contribute to the great tribe of Humanity; rather, the old reliable funk-buster that I cling to is fashionability. The futility of human endeavor? Existential dread? It’s been done to death. As one of my nieces might say, “How emo.”
How wonderful it is that the dour mien of the nihilist is lately considered a deliberate fashion choice. The idea that those who bear the outward signs of their constant meditations on meaninglessness are merely affecting a philosophical garment is one I find incredibly heartening. It wonderfully implies that dread and nausea are simply choices of no more moment than one’s hairstyle or pinky-ring selection.
The practical upshot here is that I don’t have to believe in the meaningless randomness of the material world, based simply on the evidence of my senses. I could wake up tomorrow and choose to embrace things like American Idol or Jason Mraz, and find within the same significance and meaning that some find in religion or economic theory. And why not? Why shouldn’t I make that choice?
But it’s enough for me to know that it’s an option, just one of many. The freedom to choose to inhabit a universe of angel figurines and ethical vegetarianism is a tonic that heals as it sits unopened in the medicine cabinet. I could decide to abandon my anxiety towards the cruel universal will sometime between lunch and the afternoon meeting if I wanted to, and that makes the cruelty somewhat easier to bear, I think.
The problem with thinking in this way is that one might become so soused on choice that one might accidentally write a self-help book that says, in short, that wishing does indeed make it so. There’s a fiduciary appeal in that, but surely the guilt that comes with taking money from desperate people who’ll still feel like shit afterward must be tortuous beyond belief.
