Existential stuff

I felt awkward on Friday and Saturday. Public holidays. Weather warm and humid. No breeze. Bare bones days. Uncomfortable with existence. I wasn’t at work. Schools and the shops were closed. Wifey and Little One were listless. Like sailing on a breezeless day. A disconcerting lack of external stimuli intensified the uncomfortable and even scary feeling of just being. I knew I was near the top of the Maslow Building.

Telly, cinema, work, sport, theme parks, travel (tourism), alcohol and snout are all cravings, the mythical satisfaction of which lies in the pot at the end of the rainbow. They are all temporary fixes that heighten addiction to sensorial experience – just to make sure I’m really here, just checking.

Millions of organisms have existed since life began at one minute to midnight on the earth’s clock. My ego fills the (my?) universe and squeezes out everything else. Inherited anthropocentric values abound but am I really any more important (despite a greater physical and mental complexity) than the Blattella germanica that come out at night in the cupboard under the kitchen sink?

Keep focused. Although I no longer rainbow-chase after the meaning of life, I do want some sort of meaning in my life. That’s not a problem for a person who is starving or whose life is threatened by violence. Life’s meaning then is getting a crust of bread or hanging on to existence itself (are suicides therefore schizophrenics?).

But I did say we were near the top floor.

Here’s a list (not in order) of things that take up time, energy and attention.

Relationships
Sex
Money
Health
Leisure
Work
Eating and drinking
Sleep

The list continues but I don’t think there’s any point of going on as there are enough examples here.

To some extent all these things give it meaning but on their own are not meaningful. For example, without relationships the other things on the list completely meaningless. The deliciousness of a meal may depend on the company or lack of it (and lack implies a notion of company and therefore an implied presence) and certainly depends on something. Imagine eating the meal, suspended on the end of an elastic rope in space. Imagine you are the only being that has ever existed, that exists now and that will ever exist.

It’s impossible to imagine. It’s a bit like saying “let’s practice not breathing for several minutes”. So, no being can exist without relationships. But then there are no relationships without food or sleep, no food without money (although here in the city I could rummage in bins), no leisure without work, and no work without a need to feed myself and have a roof over my head.

(To be continued...)