Another Day of Life

‘The unexamined life is not worth living’.
Socrates

I've never been so lost or confused in my life.

Okay, so maybe that’s a tad melodramatic, but I’m feeling a bit out of sorts at the moment, in a bit of an existentialist funk (if existentialism isn’t your cup of tea, then cease reading now) or something.

Indecision, impatience and anxiety stemming from uncertainty are my biggest vices (coffee has been banished from the list since I’m down to no more than 2 cups a day now).

My friends think I live quite the charmed life; Andrew calls me a ‘rambling soul’. Others tell me how lucky I am. Luck’s got nothing to do with it.

‘Luck is the residue of design’.
Milton

‘Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity’.
Seneca

Don’t get me wrong here: I suppose I have been awfully fortunate in that I’ve had the opportunity to travel the globe as a means of assuaging my wanderlust over the past few years. It took me a while to get my act together, though I certainly haven’t got regrets. I still lament my lack of language ability and the apathetic attitude I had to them as a kid, even whilst living in Spain and Germany, though I’m suddenly starting to feel the world of possibilities is constricting my ability to think rationally. It was the Greeks who were the first to see that there was a rational order to the universe – have we progressed at all since then?

This has been an ongoing issue, but I can’t shake these feelings of emptiness that continually linger; I wonder if I’m impossible to satisfy. I’m not sure what I want, what I’m after, where I want to be, what I’m doing with myself. A nine month stint here, a three month stint there – is this a healthy way to live?

It is, perhaps, depending on one’s emotional constitution. Mine is weak: I become emotionally attached easily. And I hate goodbyes and the subsequent heartache.

I hate to use such crude financial terminology but time becomes an investment. Moving to a new place takes an investment of time, energy, and yes, emotions, with no guarantee of any type of future returns. It becomes a high risk/low reward strategy, and at some point, one does have to ask oneself, are the risks worth the potentially low rewards?

Meeting new people is a massive investment of emotions. Especially when it comes to those special people in your life, whether dear, dear friends or fledgling romances that offer so much promise only to crumble when you least expect it.

And then there’s that emptiness and longing that yet again surface when, during the goodbye process, the harsh reality that you may never see this person again hits, and your emotions play havoc on your soul. The anguish that inevitably follows is draining.

You start to ask yourself whether it’s worth it, and what the point of it all is. Why do we put ourselves through such strife and torment, especially when it doesn’t seem to get any easier.

‘To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all’.
Oscar Wilde

I can see how this sounds self-defeating. Surely the point is merely to ‘live’. These experiences in and of themselves shape us, make us who we are. Much like learning about history gives meaning to what makes us human, learning about ourselves sheds light on what makes us us.

But at some point we have to stop and ask: what is it that fulfills me?

What does fulfill people – is it work? Love? Happiness? How many people truly love their jobs? Honestly, truly, candidly, etc, etc?

According to Kierkegaard, the fundamental theme of our existence is the idea that we can achieve meaning for our lives only through a decisive, life-defining commitment.

‘Once I make up my mind I’m filled with indecision’.
Oscar Levant

So where does that leave those of us who struggle to make decisions? Those of us who are scared to miss out on something because of the limitless array of possibilities out there? I’m not just talking about jobs – I’m talking about life in general, new experiences, new friends, romance, feelings, getting to know yourself, opening your eyes to the world…

What about letting others make that decision for us? As in, when the timing and circumstances are right, things just fall into place. You may not be sure of where you want to go, but suddenly someone appears on the scene who seems to make the decision making process that much easier. Only it isn’t easier because there’s confusion coursing through the two of you, and the decision-making process gets murky and convoluted. It comes back to knowing yourself, in the end. How can you trust others to make the right choices if you can’t trust yourself? Or am I contradicting myself here?

And there’s a catch anyway: getting the timing right. Timing is everything. Which means it’s awfully frustrating.

As for that age-old question of whether to follow the heart or the head? These days I trust neither.

Kierkegaard also says that only by accepting our own life story as it is can we be liberated from the craving for some sort of large-scale teleological legitimation for our existence.

Thus, must we first accept who we are before we can find fulfillment?

How can we accept who we are – or, our life story – if we’ve got no idea who we are or what we want?

How sure can one be of anything? Is it relative? We may think we’re sure of something, but that’s probably only because we’re so unsure of everything else, making the seemingly sure bet that much surer only because we’re so unsure about the unsure bits. Thus, we’re sure about something because in comparison, it’s at the very least a safer bet than the alternatives.

(There’s a bit of Donald Rumsfeld in all of us.)

Is life one giant process of elimination? Let me try this – nope, no good, next. Oh, that’s no good either. Next. Let’s give this a shot. And so on and so forth.

'Complacency is a state of mind that exists only in retrospect; it has to be shattered before being ascertained'.
Nabokov

Lately in my emails the buzzphrase has been something to the effect of ‘uncertainty is a cool thing in retrospect’. At the time, especially with someone like me who suffers from impatience as a vice, it’s a day-to-day killer. The anxiety can be overwhelming, rendering the simplest of everyday thinking tasks a challenge. Keeping my thoughts straight, thinking one day at a time, becomes downright impossible when the future is so cloudy and undefined. Don’t get me wrong: there’s a frisson of excitement to this kind of existence, but it’s hard to appreciate at the time, in a way like nostalgia. We might not be altogether thrilled with a place, but we often know, even while we are there, that we’ll look back on the experience in a fond light. And yet we remain powerless to accept and appreciate the situation for what it is. We become immune, and thus complacent.

'The world is what it is; men who have nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it'.
VS Naipaul

Here I am, with a few weeks left in my student-teaching placement, suddenly doubting whether this is well and truly what I want to do. On top of that, I’m terrified of committing to a couple of years somewhere when I’m not even sure of where I’m going with all of this. Sometimes I see my steps in life as a means to an end, but an end to what? What’s my ultimate destination? I ought to relish this uncertainty, the excitement and challenge of what lies ahead. But when your head isn’t clear, and making the simplest of choices becomes the most arduous of tasks, you come to a brick wall and are so tempted to bang your head against it.

Work: I’m not even aware of half of what’s out there, but I take comfort in the fact that most of us don’t. Then again, many of us are established in some sort of line of work, and a part of me admires those who have a firm plan and know exactly what they want to do. My students are mesmerised by the places I’ve been: when I ask them who would like to travel, around 5 or 6 amongst a sample size of over 60 answer yes. And the preferred destinations are usually England, France or Australia. When I ask whether they want to own their own homes, they look at me perplexed. When I ask about whether they want children, they’re incredulous when I tell them I don’t.

At times I wish I were like the rest of us. It would be so much easier.

But then life isn’t meant to be easy.

I’m delving pretty deep into my philosophical bag of tricks here, but I’m now turning to Marxism for help; surely the natural place to turn when one is confused about the world of work. What I lack - bearing in mind here that I’m not a Marxist, so maybe this isn’t even the problem – is that sense of being where the skill set required for success is a relentless instrumentalism. Alongside that is what I see as a pathological level of self-mastery of the emotions, only bought at the price of the corrosion of the capacity for intimacy and a stable, balanced sense of self. Somehow or another, that makes sense to me.

Ultimately, the ultimate harbinger of doom is time; more specifically, the lack of it.

Time is the most ephemeral of concepts. There just isn’t enough of it to satisfy all of my cravings. Time is finite, and thus an eternity is needed in order to accomplish only a smidgeon of what it is we want to. And perhaps even an eternity isn’t enough.

In the summer of 2002, whilst preparing for my Master’s at Edinburgh, I discovered the great, late Polish writer, Ryszard Kapuscinski. I fell in love with his work, and I fell hard and fast for Africa at the same time. Reading The Shadow of the Sun, probably my favourite book, whetted my appetite and curiosity for a place that was only satiated once I’d been to Nigeria. But the Africa bug never leaves us, and though I’m only mildly tempted to return at the moment, every now and then I do entertain the notion of a return.

Because the idea of time flusters me more than anything else, it must have been something like this that I could identify and find solace in. I quote at length because it’s so eloquent and stirring:

“The European and the African have an entirely different concept of time. In the European worldview, time exists outside man, exists objectively, and has measurable and linear characteristics. According to Newton, time is absolute: “Absolute, true, mathematical time of itself and from its own nature, it flows equably and without relation to anything external.” The European feels himself to be time's slave, dependent on it, subject to it. To exist and function, he must observe its ironclad, inviolate laws, its inflexible principles and rules. He must heed deadlines, dates, days, and hours. He moves within the rigors of time and cannot exist outside them. They impose upon him their requirements and quotas. An unresolvable conflict exists between man and time, one that always ends with man's defeat – time annihilates him.

Africans apprehend time differently. For them, it is a much looser concept, more open, elastic, subjective. It is man who influences time, its shape, course, and rhythm (man acting, of course, with the consent of gods and ancestors). Time is even something that man can create outright, for time is made manifest through events, and whether an event takes place or not depends, after all, on man alone. If two armies do not engage in a battle, then that battle will not occur (in other words, time will not have revealed its presence, will not have come into being).

Time appears as a result of our actions, and vanishes when we neglect or ignore it. It is something that springs to life under our influence, but falls into a state of hibernation, even nonexistence, if we do not direct our energy toward it. It is a subservient, passive essence, and, most importantly, one dependent on man.”

I’m ready to concede defeat to time. It gets the better of me. I can hardly believe I’m about to quote my mother here, but she likes to say on a daily basis, to the point of annoyance, ‘take your time, or time takes you.’

Let it, I say.

Here’s a challenge I’m now posing to my dear and loyal readers: why don’t you decide on the next step for me? I’ll entertain all [relatively serious] suggestions, weigh them with great consideration, and choose the best option, if the opportunity permits. Keep in mind my skill set, or lack thereof, and interests. This is also a test as to how well you know me. Consider this some kind of grand experiment. I'm open to a lot of things.

There’s an infinite world of possibilities out there: that is exciting.

But there’s also the tragic possibility that the one thing we finally discover we think we want the most, more than anything else in the world, which for a while is there for the taking, fleetingly slips from our grasp, while we’re powerless to stop it.

It’s that kind of heartbreak which terrifies me the most.