Another One I Couldn't Think of a Title For.

The older I get, the more I realise that I’ve largely spent my life so far observing rather than engaging. I’ve engaged with passion often enough, and all the emotional states that go with it, but not much else really. I hear people saying things that we’re all supposed to understand, and I don’t. I don’t know what ‘I love you’ means; I don’t know what ‘you’re my friend’ means. I used to have some vague notion of what drives people to want to win or be successful, but even they’ve all but disappeared. What value is there in winning unless some greater good hangs on it, in which case it’s the good that’s meaningful, not the winning for its own sake. And what the hell is success? Certainly I’ve experienced a wide variety of situations, known a wide variety of people, done a wide variety of jobs, felt a wide variety of atmospheres and so on. But it’s nearly always been a case of playing the game just to get a better vantage point from which to observe.

These days I catch the TV news and bits of other programmes, and I can’t for the life of me understand why so many people get so angry or ecstatic over stuff that is so fucking trivial! And the watching of adverts is becoming ever more agonising, so I don’t do it. Andrea posted a video of a baby laughing hysterically at the tearing of a piece of paper. That gave me a lot of pleasure; there was something real and meaningful about it, even though I hadn’t a clue what the meaning was. Except, I suppose, that it was all about instinct and spirit, and nothing at all to do with winning, being successful, having an expensive car, or judging the quality of our lives in terms of standards set by others. It’s here if you want to see it. And then I watch and listen to the people in charge... Jesus! I’ll take the pointless tearing of a piece of paper any day.

And so I become ever more convinced that what the sages tell us is right – that we have lifetime after lifetime playing this virtual reality game until we become bored with the shallow pleasures it offers. And then we begin to suspect that it’s time we started considering how to get off the wheel. I’m not sure how close to that point I am, but I think it’s getting close.

I daresay all this sounds like a dose of classic existential angst. If it is, I now realise that the roots have been with me all my life. I expect I’ll soon get back to playing the game for the sake of passing the time. And at least there’s music to listen to. For now, I think I’ll get a bit drunk.

If any of this depresses or irritates you, do excuse me. I wanted to make a post and this is what slipped out.