It's all about how you get through the day. You tell yourself any story you like. The stories, the lies, the self-deception and deceit, no matter how uplifting or how degrading for you or others they may be; they don't matter. What matters is that you keep going. despite anything and despite everything, despite the rest.
It seems impossible and indeed, pointless, that you should.
But after a while your innate self, the nature of a human being will take over and as always you will fall back into the ploy of following the currents of life. letting yourself drift on the temporary whim and drive of others to point the way forward. Letting yourself glide along is the the trick.
We are people who live in thought. I can not give you a fraction of the stuff I've thought and the numerous and endless, pointless scenarios I've thought up to 'dream' myself through the day; they've all been fake, each and every one of them. but I'm still here, occasionally, and currently, to my great regret.
I tell myself it is for others that I do this thing. because there is no hope. there is no drive. there is no wish for, or of myself. I'm just plodding forwards. taking the path of least resistance, rolling into the next situation. Trusting, no, hoping that there is a light at the end of the dreary tunnel.
Some of my favourite fiction deals with this. And it's not that I always recognize this. just in some cases, obvious cases, I do.
True Detective, Scott Bakker's the Second Apocalypse, Malazan the Book of the Fallen, there's bound to be others. I'd like to mention the Acts of Caine and Baltimore but I'm not sure they fit the requirements.
Nihilism and the worthlessness of humankind (though this is absolutely not Malazan's message, but one of its messages is definitely that nature and life itself is probably better off without humanity's destructive selft). yet we all find meaning for ourselves. we tell ourselves the meaning that seems to apply, simply because there must be one. This existance could not possibly be without it.
Right?
Quite a negative view, don't you think? I mean, we all have difficult times, but in a world with Monty Python, coffee, wonderfully strange landscapes, Gormenghast and fascinating people? I just don't think I would want to wait for the time to pass when there are so many wonderful things out there waiting to be discovered, waiting to be experienced.
ReplyDeleteWell, here is an article you might find interesting: https://starsbeetlesandfools.blogspot.com/2012/12/on-escapism.html
Nihilism isn't that interesting of a philosophy to be honest, so I would read some other philosophy to free yourself of that weary, dreary, nasty, nihilist outlook on life.
I don't mean to be condescending; just sharing my own experience and advice.
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ReplyDeleteHm, the formatting turned out a bit weird.
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