Pro-blem? Existential Dread
“Pro-bleeeeeemmmmm?!?!?” she exclaimed, while sticking a microphone taped to a golden mannequin leg into my face.
I stare at her, my eyes wide, slightly panicking while scrambling for a better way to explain what I want to say. I draw a blank. I resign myself to saying “existential dread”.
She is not thrilled with that. She has to regroup with other audience members. She comes back to me a couple of times, but I’m not giving her the right material to work with. She eventually “solves” it by burning someone’s sock on stage and then having a few more socks put through a scanner and stored in a plastic bag.
What more could I expect from a play called ha ha ha ha ha ha ha? I didn’t think I would get a blog post out of it, but here we are.
My problem is not existential dread. If I could summarize my problem into a sound bite, I don’t think it would be a problem for long. As one of my favorite podcasts, Fixable, likes to say, as Einstein said, if you had one hour to solve a problem, spend 55 minutes figuring out the question and the remaining 5 for the solution.
Fortunately, I have more than an hour to figure out the question.
Unfortunately, working on it feels horrible.
It requires staring into the void of self. Trying to reconnect with my purpose of existence. What I’m supposed to do with my life.
That’s really hard to do and feel mentally stable when I haven’t done the 20+ things I need to do every day to feel okay. Because, being not okay is a natural reaction to the system and environment we live in. No one is actually set up for success by any meaningful definition of the word. No one should naturally be feeling okay.
But despite all of that, and still not figuring out my problem, I have figured out my purpose - to bring as much love into my life as possible in as many shapes and forms. Love of music, love of movement, love of learning, love of connecting, love of reading, love of television, love of movies, love of eating, love of adventure, love of the strange and unexpected, love of the familiar and routine. At any given moment, if I can’t find love in what I am doing or for the people around me, I need to make a change.
I have this whole theory about the three unlimited resources – Love, Gratitude and Imagination, and how you can cultivate one by leaning into the other two. Let me know if you’d like me to expand on this thought or if the theory itself if enough.
I also think I’ve figured out what I want. Setting religious belief and other doctrines aside, it is my sincere wish that there is nothing more beyond this life. That everything extinguishes with our consciousness. Reading this may trigger a negative emotional reaction, but bear with me. How wonderful it would be if it was all so simple? That the most important thing was to be engaged and invested in living your life, knowing that this is all you get?
Oh no, did I write all of this to re-derive YOLO? Oops.
—
Do you want to be notified of my blog post and my other updates once a month? Subscribe to my free substack newsletter 5 on the 9.
