![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
demiurgentI'm not sure what the point is.
Of anything, really. I survive, barely. I work. I have a few dozen people all make it clear that somehow their happiness is dependent on me. I go home. I doze half the evening. I wake up and watch the same TV over and over again. I try to write and fail.
You know, fourteen years ago, I was convinced the world was a grand, and magical place. I had and knew love. I had people I spent every day with. I had nothing but hopes for the future.
Now? The world isn't magical. I spend my days with coworkers, then can't even stay away to stay in contact with my friends online. I'm becoming convinced there is no love in the twenty-first century. And I'm thinking a lot about death.
Not about suicide, really. There is a difference. But about death. If I were to die right now, right here, it seems to me the only real repercussion would be for my cat. Oh, I have friends, and they'd grieve. I don't mean to minimize them. But they'd survive, they'd move on, they'd remember me a couple of times a year, and occasionally bring me up. Frank would get wistful sometimes, talking to his wife or some old friends. And that would be it.
Nothing meaningful would follow in the path of my life. Nothing enduring would remain. And it seems increasingly likely that nothing will. So what is the point? Why do we pretend? Why do I endure ten hours a day of stress and angry people and come home and play with a cat and then sleep so I can go back?
Why bother? What is the god damned point?
Of anything, really. I survive, barely. I work. I have a few dozen people all make it clear that somehow their happiness is dependent on me. I go home. I doze half the evening. I wake up and watch the same TV over and over again. I try to write and fail.
You know, fourteen years ago, I was convinced the world was a grand, and magical place. I had and knew love. I had people I spent every day with. I had nothing but hopes for the future.
Now? The world isn't magical. I spend my days with coworkers, then can't even stay away to stay in contact with my friends online. I'm becoming convinced there is no love in the twenty-first century. And I'm thinking a lot about death.
Not about suicide, really. There is a difference. But about death. If I were to die right now, right here, it seems to me the only real repercussion would be for my cat. Oh, I have friends, and they'd grieve. I don't mean to minimize them. But they'd survive, they'd move on, they'd remember me a couple of times a year, and occasionally bring me up. Frank would get wistful sometimes, talking to his wife or some old friends. And that would be it.
Nothing meaningful would follow in the path of my life. Nothing enduring would remain. And it seems increasingly likely that nothing will. So what is the point? Why do we pretend? Why do I endure ten hours a day of stress and angry people and come home and play with a cat and then sleep so I can go back?
Why bother? What is the god damned point?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
what's the point?
Date: 2003-02-11 12:14 pm (UTC)i don't think i can describe the moment in which that stopped bothering me. it wasn't quite a religious experience, but it felt as if a giant boulder had rolled off my spirit. see, i remember george, who died many years ago, and who is also not in any history books. but he added magic to my life -- the magic of small moments of joined laughter at something really silly, the magic of his look of pure concentration when he was working on a finicky program, the magic of that precisely turned phrase in one of his emails. i shall remember george for as long as i have memories.
the magic of my life is in those small things. and i know i make that happen for other people.
it's not the magic of slaying the destroyer of worlds, *little smile*. but really, i don't believe in that kind of magic anyway. that's not how this life works. i believe in the magic of fractals, of butterfly wings beating in the amazon rainforest. i will never even know what effect some small thing i do has.
it's ok. as long as i strive to pay attention to details. without the details there would be no life. and if i consider it worth doing, i ought to do it well.
and you know, i am damn busy with that. :)
i don't know if this sort of thing speaks to you at all. i believe each of us has to find zir own goal/purpose for life, and it can help to step away from society's much-vaunted expectations, and listen to all the voices that mumble from beyond the resulting silence.
The Point Is
Date: 2003-02-12 11:17 am (UTC)A couple of great philosophers (sp?) have said its not the destination, its the journey.
Frank isn't the only one that would miss you. You and I have known each other for, Damn!, 20 years now.
I drank a toast to you on your birthday recently, and remember more than a couple of times a year the adventures we have shared.
There may never be a monument in your honor my friend, but its the people that remember you that count.
Kevin