I must be the opposite of the Springtime of Youth. The Springtime of Youth board makes me smile, but in a way it frustrates me. Why? It's because I can't even remotely find that kind of vigor in myself. I'm 24, and I feel like my life has bled away before my eyes, turned to ash and dust. I'm so tired, physically, mentally, emotionally...
The responses of others in this thread prove that you are not alone in your feelings, and perhaps you can take some comfort from that. Human beings possess the power of thought beyond any other creature, but with the power of thought comes all of life’s suffering and pathos. When our lives are not mired in the physical hardships of ages past; when our hands are idle and our bellies full; then our minds get into to all kinds of mischief. This is a part of who we are. Knowing that doesn’t make it any easier, but it’s nice to know anyway…just because.
I find myself wondering what it is that makes you—you in particular—tired and weary. All of us are familiar with that feeling, but for each person the anguish comes from a different place.
Sometimes it comes from doubt. We spend our lives building up our worldview, developing a sense of what is precious, and devoting ourselves to what we decide is important. Then, one day, something cracks that we thought was unbreakable. And we doubt ourselves. Our entire sense of self-worth goes on trial. I’m a writer too, and I’ve visited that doubt on a couple of occasions. What if my stories aren’t enough? What if I can’t write them to my satisfaction? What if they don’t give me the sense of fulfillment I want from them? Everyone has moments like that, in their own way, and these are depressing moments…moments that can last for an hour, or a lifetime. This is the depression that comes from a person doubting the worth of the life they have built for themselves.
Sometimes the anguish comes from despair. Rather than doubting ourselves, we can doubt the whole universe with a simple question: What if there’s no point to any of it? Indeed, actual
meaning is something that can only be created, not discovered. The world itself simply
is. All the color in it is make-believe, existing only in the space between our ears. Most people never, ever suspect that, but those who do are forced to confront a lifetime of belief that the world has some kind of inherent order to it, assigned either by a god or by nature. Even doubting that idea, let alone rejecting it outright, is more than some people can bear. This is the depression that comes from a person feeling as though all things were futile.
Sometimes the anguish comes from detestation. We grow depressed when we live in slavery, and it doesn’t matter whether the yoke is literally a yoke, or something much more modern, like the pressure to fit into a certain clothing size. Slavery is to be deprived of one’s self-determination. We are strongly pressured to act, live, and even think in a certain way. Sometimes we are only barely aware of these pressures, despite their overwhelming influence on us. But, aware or not, as a result of their power, life becomes artificial and cheap. It is not the life we want to live, yet it is the life we have…and so we grow to resent it. When that resentment wears out, all that is left is a weariness with the world that no sleep can heal. The mind closes in defeat. This is the depression that comes from a person wanting something they cannot have.
Sometimes the anguish comes from disembodiment. In contrast to slavery, sometimes life becomes so abstract and free—as it has for those of us who enjoy the benefits of a materially successful society—that the mind loses its way. Without a strong sense of identity, people end up drifting. They latch on to anything that stimulates them, but it never lasts, because there is no foundation, no strong personal identity, to act as a fertile soil. That’s what leads to burnouts like Britney Spears…people who never had a strong sense of self, getting caught in a spiral of having to become more and more extreme just to feel normal. This is the depression that comes from a person knowing that they need
something, but not knowing what.
Sometimes the anguish comes from disillusionment. The world is as jam-packed with promises as it is devoid of guarantees, and it often seems as though the warranty on a thing expires the day after you start to care about it. As children we cook up all kinds of wonderful excitement, only to grow up and learn that life is full of disappointments, rigid customs, lies, and mediocrity. This is especially hard for people who invest much of their self-worth in the outside world…in the form of friends, or hobbies. When those things lose their value, as they so often do, the individuals suffer mightily. Nor is this disillusionment caused only by the outside world. It can come from within as well. Each of us realizes at some point that we’ll never be the best, or even all that unique. Even someone like Michael Phelps will only be competitive for a very short while in his life, in a very narrow feat. If any of us is “one in a million” on this Earth of over six billion, then there are over six thousand of us right now. Our every thought and emotion has been experienced already by someone else. Our every feat in life is very likely to be the same. It’s a disappointing, disillusioning world, and we are just another part of it. This is the depression that comes from a person reconciling their unbounded imagination with the practical constraints of real life.
Sometimes the anguish comes from disenfranchisement. Some people are simply out of their league in this life. They possess not the smarts, the wherewithal, the relationships, the abilities, or the accomplishments to contend with life. They are outgunned and outclassed by a remorseless world that is far bigger than them and an imperfect society that did not sufficiently empower them. And the worst part is that, eventually, they figure it out. This is the depression that comes from a person who feels all of the same human impulses as the rest of us, but does not even know how to ask the first question.
I wonder if your anguish, your fatigue with life, comes from any of these sources, in part or in whole. It looks from what you have written as though you are losing your vivacity, your will to live. I call that the spark of life. It is the difference between being young and old. Most people will lose their spark over time, early in life or later on, and when that light goes out it doesn’t come back. We can only be made once; we can only be broken once. That’s where the saying comes from, “Life’s a bitch and then you die.” I have met my share of people who lost their spark, or are losing it.
Even so, there is hope. You’re young, for one thing, which means you very likely still have a malleable mind. If you can change the way you think, then you may find a happy ending to all of this. The spark of life is not replaceable, but it is resilient, and what remains of yours will roar back to life, if nurtured. For another thing, you are a writer, and I always give writers extra experience points. =)
While everyone around me is moving forward, I feel like I'm literally standing still, at a dead stop that I'm unable to break free of. I do have things going for me, but they all feel colorless and bland, pointless. In fact, everything in my life feels colorless and bland. I have so many things I need to do, but no idea how to go forward.
My very good friend, one of my very best friends, who is from England and speaks accordingly, told me once that it is okay to spend one’s twenties in a state of motionlessness. The teens and early twenties are for radical development of the will. Those are the years when our personality matures into its adult form. Afterwards, the remaining years of one’s twenties are, properly, an era for soul-searching, introspection, and contemplation. I know exactly what you mean when you say that you feel as though you are “standing still” while everyone else is “moving forward.” But make no mistake! The motion is yours. Even by asking these questions, and suffering these conflicts, you are developing in a way that many of your contemporaries are not.
This is the time of your life to determine who you are and what you are about. Take the time to do it well. Take all the time you need. Take years! This is one of the great chapters of your life. You are young; your tale is not yet one-third told. Your outward circumstances will, eventually, start to move on their own accord. For the time being, it is perfectly okay to not make progress outwardly. External progress is nice, it’s not at all a bad thing…but don’t feel as though
internal progress is any less valuable. To the contrary, internal development is more important than anything. These are the years whereby you become a person, in the fullest sense of the word. I tell you this: True satisfaction is knowing who you are, knowing what you want, and appreciating where you are. Now ask yourself…how much of that is internal, and how much external?
Making money, building a résumé…those are fine things, but so many people fill their lives too fully with these outward commitments, which then sap all of their time and energy, leaving scant little for true internal development. Poor fools…before they know it, they look up and they’re in their fifties. People who plunge headlong into their careers or families in their twenties are either being foolhardy or they are exceptionally ahead of the curve.
Don’t try and go forward until you know where you are, and who you are. Don’t try and go anywhere. No. Stop. Look around you. There are many things to see. Find them. Look at them. Touch and smell them. Appreciate them. Grok them. Marvel at the simple act of picking an apple from a tree, or pouring a glass of milk. Is the glass beautiful? Is the milk creamy? Does the kitchen light reflect off the glass and onto the smooth countertop? Does the glass filled with milk feel cold in your hand? And what does “cold” really feel like? What can you learn from that?
Be aware, wherever you are. Look at the flowers by the side of the road. Watch the clouds roll through the sky. Feel the rushing wind and its touch on your clothes and face. Think of the artistic beauty and clockwork precision of this world which you are so graced to inhabit with a sentient, curious mind and a healthy body. Let these thoughts seep into your being. As a writer, let them flow back out of you with your character affixed to them.
Honest: There is nowhere worth going until you can be glad to be where you are, even if where you are is a terrible place. Even the bad times…sickness, smelly garbage, and the loss of dear friends…even these things and perhaps
especially them must be appreciated too.
Make sure you have the time you need to be alone with your thoughts. No excuses. Make the time. And, if you think it would help, find yourself some satisfying manual work to perform that allows you to wander freely in your thoughts even as you expend your physical energy.
When you are there, free in your thoughts, seek to cultivate your inner awe. It is that curiosity toward the world and ourselves. It is amusement. It is thoughtfulness. It is fascination, awareness, excitement. It is playfulness, and friendship, and imagination. It is vivacity, vigor. It is the spark of life. With these powers…a person will never be tired.
I speak, of course, from my own perspective. Daniel Krispin advises that you read tragedies because that is his experience, and he thinks well enough of his life as yet. Likewise, my experience is awareness, creativity, gladness, and a strong desire to know things. I can attest to the satisfaction these qualities have brought me. You may or may not be anything like me, but it is hard to imagine that these qualities could ever but enrich a person. Find them in your own way, in your own style.
Look for these qualities in your dreams—your real dreams, the ones you have when you sleep. When you first wake up in the morning, write down any interesting dream you had.
Look for these qualities in the things that delighted you as a child…movies or toys or stories. The slide or the merry-go-round, the Game Boy…those things may not provide you with the satisfaction they once did, but if you can understand why they delighted you in the first place, you can look to find that delight elsewhere. It’s out there.
Look for these qualities in your daily life. Look at the rooms in your home with new eyes. Stand in different places. Eat dinner under the table for a change. Move the furniture. Try to discover the details. Ask yourself each night, what combination of lights would make you the most content? Be in touch with yourself and your surroundings.
Keep looking, because here’s another secret: Even if you were never to get another step further beyond the quest for self-awareness, you could die saying that you were living well.
I know I'm likely depressed.
Daniel Krispin is half-right. There is some value in putting on a smile, even if it is a fake one, because sometimes that fake smile will turn true. Try it, right now. Smile from ear to ear. Let your whole face smile, not just the muscles around your mouth. Even if it doesn’t make you feel good, it will almost certainly make you feel better.
On the other hand, he left something out: It’s okay to be sad. It’s okay to be tired. It’s okay to be depressed. When you are any of these things, don’t pretend that you aren’t. Let them work their dark magic in you. Accept them. We humans have a wide range of emotions, and they are all valuable to us. The best time to put on a Krispanian smile is when you know you are sad and can accept it. You have to know where you are before you can move forward.
His death has made me think very hard on the purpose of life. Is there any purpose at all? Is it to have children? To make discoveries? To die? I don't believe in an afterlife, don't believe in some great beautiful hereafter. So what is the point?
Ah! Who am I? Why am I here? Is there nothing more? You ask the central questions of humanity. Grappling with these questions is like nothing else.
For me it happened throughout my senior year of high school, as I began to transition from adolescence to adulthood, and it culminated when I read
Cosmos by Carl Sagan. That book was like a period mark at the end of a sentence I had spent my whole childhood creating. When I read that book, I knew who I was.
To me, the purpose of life is to learn all that is learnable, and then use that knowledge to shape the world in my image, letting other people’s lives wash over me and shape me, while pursuing all my life’s ambitions. The universe may not have one grand creator, but the Earth is full of little ones. That is the evolutionary heritage we enjoy: Life must be resilient, and adaptive. We have evolved our powerful minds as a direct consequence of their usefulness to our continued existence. Once there was no one who could behold the wonder of the universe. Now there is us.
The material that makes up our bodies and our world was forged billions of years ago in the inferno of supernovae. We are, as Sagan put it, little pieces of the universe, trying to understand itself. We are star stuff. And as we go through life trying to pay the bills and all that, I try and excite people into remembering why we are really here. It turns out there is no “why,” only a “how,” and the “how” of it is that we are here to decide for ourselves what to do.
Probably the worst thing is that I don't even know what I want from life. A while back someone (Zeality, I believe) started a thread, discussing the penultimate/ultimate/secondary desires they had in life. I thought long and hard after reading that thread, reluctant to even try to reply, because I honestly don't know. It's stuck with me ever since I read the post, trying to think about what I want out of life. It isn't necessarily love (I don't believe in true "love", anyway), or power, or specific achievements. I mean, I have things that I want to do, but they're not anywhere near the penultimate/ultimate purpose of life level.
Life offers us two great prizes. One is ambition, and the fulfillment thereof. What the ambition is does not matter…be it the ambition to invent time travel or simply to get married and hatch a kid.
The other prize exists independently of ambition. This is serenity. After becoming aware of the world, one can become serene in it. It’s like being in that warm place where life began. It is the very opposite of the bliss that may come from living in ignorance. This is the bliss of awareness…which I call serenity, because it is undertaken knowingly. When one is serene, all things are both familiar and novel at once—familiar because they invite cogent thought, and new because they are exquisitely unique. Serenity is happiness without passion. Passion belongs to ambition. Serenity is thankfulness, gratitude, and good cheer. Serenity is relaxation, ease, and the utter death of all self-doubt. It is the ability to say, “Whatever I am, I am glad to be. Wherever I am, I am glad to be here.”
When one becomes serene, ambition becomes less important because it is almost as good just to dally about and savor the moment. Of course, a person can have both ambitions and serenity, or one or the other. Each is a great prize, worth having, and while some people are not ambitious, everyone is capable of finding serenity. So if you don’t know what you want from life, then worry not. Maybe it will come to you someday, because people who retain the spark of life can always cultivate new high ambitions, even into their twilight years. Maybe it won’t come to you, and that’s okay too, because you can still look for contentment and happiness by embracing the world and your presence in it. I said earlier that it’s okay to be sad. Well…it’s also okay to be happy. That is the power of serenity. You don’t need a further reason. If anyone asks why you’re looking so cheery, you can say “Just because.”
I need to speak to my father, but I don't know how. He's done a lot of bad things, but I know, somewhere in the deep recesses of my mind, that he loves me. But I'm so upset by his mere presence that I can't even speak to him. The problem is that he doesn't have much time left on this Earth, so what do I do? Do I go with the path of least resistance, the one that will tear me up less? Or do I potentially derail my sanity for a week and go see him anyway?
I would say that you should definitely see him, but that isn’t necessarily true. If you love him, or ever loved him, then you should definitely see him. Otherwise, he is dead already and you should move on with your life.
I'm not exactly sure why I'm posting this here. I've been lurking on this board so long that I feel like I know a lot of you, even if I don't post very much. I'm sorry to whine...sometimes venting helps me figure things out.
I know what you mean. =)
My current wish? I want to get a book published. I've written the book, been turned down five times by publishers, only to have the most recent publisher send it back to me three times asking me to revise parts of the story. I want to believe that they're interested and may eventually pick up the text, but I don't dare get my hopes up.
I’m a writer too, as I said before. One of the hardest lessons to learn in this trade is not to take defeat personally. Even if you get rejected fifty times, you will still be in good company. It takes a lot of patience and a very thick skin to get published. Being rejected is not a statement about your character or abilities as a writer. It is the consequence of participating in a prohibitively competitive industry. Besides, the people judging your submissions may themselves not have the best judgment, or they may be under orders to look for a certain style of writing. Whatever! When you do get published, you can stick your tongue out at them. And if you ever make it to J.K. Rowling status, you can use your money to become the next Stalin and RULE THEM ALL!!
In the meantime, work on your craft. Write more, and write better. Then submit those pieces for publication as well. Be sure to blog, and write to newspapers or magazines to inquire about getting your work published. Try to build up a little bit of a name for yourself online. Remember, if you start your own website, you’re guaranteed to get published there, any time you want. And, who knows! Maybe some people will even read it. If they do, maybe they’ll like it and stick around. They’ll become your loyal fans. They will go to your readings. They’ll buy your t-shirts. They’ll take bullets for you. It can only help, when you’re submitting your pieces to the big publishers, to be able to mention that you have three thousand rabid fans.
Good luck! Maybe you’ll treat us to a sample of your non-Chronoverse creative writing on the Compendium sometime? Seriously! Whoever you are, behind that screen name, I’m glad you’re here. Thanks for venting.
