As this is my first blog, it would be prudent that I get a few things out of the way:
1. I think blogging is a place to have your ego stroked because you have not been published.
2. There's nothing wrong with generalizing by saying, "you".
3. I just started a blog, which makes me a hypocrite.
4. Life is complex, therefore we are all hypocrites to some degree and I can accept that.
5. The little ego inside me that wants to be fed will not be taking donations from this page.
6. Therefore, if you've stumbled here for some reason or another, or you are my friend and I posted an easy link here and you actually decided to read, then please don't tell me how good or bad you think my blog is.
7. The purpose of this blog is for my own personal satisfaction to put something into the world that is somewhere other than my hard drive. Therefore, enjoy.
I will stop the list at 7, because it really is already becoming too much about me (and because 7 is just that perfect number).
He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.
Friedrich Nietzsche
There are some days when you just are not busy enough. Days where you don't get to go to the gym or work or use your brain. It's days like those that thoughts just pile up in your mind and need a door or a window or just some tiny crack to escape from so they don't drive you mad.
Obviously this is one of those days. Here we are (humanity that is), and we are all in our different boxes of life today. Each one of us convincing ourselves that our lives are special, that they have purpose and meaning and that life is more than just a long series of events leading ultimately to the end. I understand the bleak outlook that this paints upon life as a whole and it may be extremely unfair to open in such a manner. However, not all of humanity is America. Not all of humanity is the majority of the "Blogosphere" either, and by that I mean middle-class white English speakers between the ages of 16 and 35. There is a huge world out there with people living their lives day to day and in the most severe of conditions that, I, a 23 yr-old, white college student cannot even begin to comprehend. It is for the masses of humanity in India and China and Africa and Russia who hold on to the basic values of life, that I open with such an intense statement.
I do not think that life is not worth living. There is so much to life that is worth living that I would be a fool to attempt to list the reasons. One must wonder though, is it our cushier lives that give us pause to say: "Wow, what is my ultimate goal?" Or is it the feeling that you don't just want to be another puzzle piece in society that gives us the thoughts of: "Why the fuck am I here and if it isn't to have some sort of impact on the world, then is it just so I can enjoy the "sweet and sour" of life? I have gotten quite existential and probably overstepped my bounds in opening that philosophical meaning of life door that has been around since man decided to make a god out of the Sun.
To get to the meat of my wonderings, there is always this person inside that is pushing at me. It is the drive. Some might call it the Ego, some might call it free will, higher thought, Dostoyevsky called it the "Dark Drive." Do we all have it? Is it just those who feel they need to express themselves through music, or poetry or writing or painting or acting who really embrace it? Do some of us just shut it out with knowledge, or science, or drugs or faith or love or beaten complacency? I don't know. I know that it is always there, whispering and not in a literal schizophrenic way but in a nagging, child-pulling-at-your-jeans-to-constantly-get-your-attention way. Except, when you look down to see what it wanted, its gone and has slipped through your fingers.
It's this basic drive that I think has so many forms. It is the "WHY". It's not just a survival mechanism because nothing in the human mind is that simple. When we can have disorders that fuck with our desire to eat, something animals can do 10 times out of 10, then you know, "hmm, we are really complex to make the most simple things so difficult." And so when I say that we are convincing ourselves that we have a purpose and reason for life, that is one thing that separates us from all the other life on the planet. It may be unconscious but, it is the "why", and every other species just has the "how" wired into them. So no matter if you are living in a slum in India with a million other people or drinking away the cold facts of human existence in Russia or even zoning out at the television in America, there is this "why" that drives us. We can use it to propel us through life or we can ignore it to dull life down. When all these thoughts pile up in my head, I choose to use it and it feels that much better.
