Letter to a friend - "Existential Crises"
Jan. 4, 2008
Well, thank you for your honesty (though I DO expect it as a matter of course anyway, like I said!). I guess if I were to respond to what you said, I would say what you think is in line with what I tend to hear from certain types of people--those who are driven, successful, "goal oriented" and all that implies. You certainly fit this personality type. They tend to look at me as an unfinished product, because this frame of reference sees human development as a linear operation. The idea is that we move through recognizable stages, and because I don't have certain defining characteristics (a house, a family, a career, etc.) I am in a certain specific stage. In the future I will be in a higher, more advanced stage. This is a very common way of looking at things; in fact, it is pretty much The American Way. (Admittedly, you didn't cast what you were saying in materialistic terms. But I'm not critiquing you, I'm just unraveling my thoughts while they are fresh. You gave me something good to chew on; I knew I kept you around for a reason! :-P)
Perhaps it may not surprise you that I don't totally agree with that paradigm, though what I think doesn't invalidate anything you said. I always saw that kind of life (one that develops linearly) as a conscious choice I could make or refuse, not the automatic, semi-conscious assembly line it is to many people. I had a pretty good chance to be a yuppie once; all I had to do was get my engineering degree, which I was 80% done with, anyway. But it didn't happen. There were a lot of reasons why it didn't happen, but I know one of them was that living out this pattern didn't seem like a real life to me--it seemed too easy, too effortless, too fake to hold any real meaning. I didn't value the possibilities this life offered for the same reason I am made uneasy by women who respond strongly and quickly to my personality: There is no clear connection that I can discern between a deliberate effort on my part and the outcome. Things seem to just happen on their own, whatever I may actually be feeling. I can't accept that; there must be something more to it, and I have to understand WHY.
I know better than to think I will have figured out ANYTHING in 5-10 years, because I have been trying for longer than that, and have made little real progress. A lot of the mental frameworks that people construct that allow them to live out the stages you describe either don't exist for me, or seem so hopelessly artificial that I can't believe in them. It's hard to have any faith in how you are expected to live your life if you believe deep down it's all a house of cards. So much of modern life seems so fraught with risk to me, that I have long assumed the only reason most people get married and have children is because they have never really thought about what those things entail. Well, I have thought about it, and it makes me shiver. It certainly doesn't make me eager to move upward into any "higher" stage. Jobs get outsourced, spouses cheat, houses burn down, children grow up and move away. I can't understand measuring my life in such terms.
Perhaps I'm not making any sense. But I know that who I may be if I ever do figure it all out might be something radically different from what you imagine. It will fit MY definition of success, and while that seems to always be shifting it has rarely jived with that of most people I've known. But there is also the possibility that I will never even settle on a final definition of "success" at all--that I will live out my life in the same state of personal anomie that I have spent my adulthood in so far. Personally, I have sometimes wondered if the non-judgmentalism and openness others value in me is merely a manifestation of that anomie--in other words, I don't have those positive traits, I merely have no standards at all, so it's all good!
Personally, I think I am tiptoeing up to the point described in the link above as the crux of Camus' novel The Stranger: "Ultimately, Camus presents the world as essentially meaningless and therefore, the only way to arrive at any meaning or purpose is to make it oneself."
Yeah, I definitely get the meaninglessness bit. And I WANT to construct my own meaning, I really do.
I just don't know how.
Chris
p.s. - If you actually read all this in one sitting, you ARE a friend!
Well, thank you for your honesty (though I DO expect it as a matter of course anyway, like I said!). I guess if I were to respond to what you said, I would say what you think is in line with what I tend to hear from certain types of people--those who are driven, successful, "goal oriented" and all that implies. You certainly fit this personality type. They tend to look at me as an unfinished product, because this frame of reference sees human development as a linear operation. The idea is that we move through recognizable stages, and because I don't have certain defining characteristics (a house, a family, a career, etc.) I am in a certain specific stage. In the future I will be in a higher, more advanced stage. This is a very common way of looking at things; in fact, it is pretty much The American Way. (Admittedly, you didn't cast what you were saying in materialistic terms. But I'm not critiquing you, I'm just unraveling my thoughts while they are fresh. You gave me something good to chew on; I knew I kept you around for a reason! :-P)
Perhaps it may not surprise you that I don't totally agree with that paradigm, though what I think doesn't invalidate anything you said. I always saw that kind of life (one that develops linearly) as a conscious choice I could make or refuse, not the automatic, semi-conscious assembly line it is to many people. I had a pretty good chance to be a yuppie once; all I had to do was get my engineering degree, which I was 80% done with, anyway. But it didn't happen. There were a lot of reasons why it didn't happen, but I know one of them was that living out this pattern didn't seem like a real life to me--it seemed too easy, too effortless, too fake to hold any real meaning. I didn't value the possibilities this life offered for the same reason I am made uneasy by women who respond strongly and quickly to my personality: There is no clear connection that I can discern between a deliberate effort on my part and the outcome. Things seem to just happen on their own, whatever I may actually be feeling. I can't accept that; there must be something more to it, and I have to understand WHY.
I know better than to think I will have figured out ANYTHING in 5-10 years, because I have been trying for longer than that, and have made little real progress. A lot of the mental frameworks that people construct that allow them to live out the stages you describe either don't exist for me, or seem so hopelessly artificial that I can't believe in them. It's hard to have any faith in how you are expected to live your life if you believe deep down it's all a house of cards. So much of modern life seems so fraught with risk to me, that I have long assumed the only reason most people get married and have children is because they have never really thought about what those things entail. Well, I have thought about it, and it makes me shiver. It certainly doesn't make me eager to move upward into any "higher" stage. Jobs get outsourced, spouses cheat, houses burn down, children grow up and move away. I can't understand measuring my life in such terms.
Perhaps I'm not making any sense. But I know that who I may be if I ever do figure it all out might be something radically different from what you imagine. It will fit MY definition of success, and while that seems to always be shifting it has rarely jived with that of most people I've known. But there is also the possibility that I will never even settle on a final definition of "success" at all--that I will live out my life in the same state of personal anomie that I have spent my adulthood in so far. Personally, I have sometimes wondered if the non-judgmentalism and openness others value in me is merely a manifestation of that anomie--in other words, I don't have those positive traits, I merely have no standards at all, so it's all good!
Personally, I think I am tiptoeing up to the point described in the link above as the crux of Camus' novel The Stranger: "Ultimately, Camus presents the world as essentially meaningless and therefore, the only way to arrive at any meaning or purpose is to make it oneself."
Yeah, I definitely get the meaninglessness bit. And I WANT to construct my own meaning, I really do.
I just don't know how.
Chris
p.s. - If you actually read all this in one sitting, you ARE a friend!