when meaninglessness matters

I was skimming my old blog posts and ended up re-reading this old article about Tolstoy going through a sort of midlife crisis. Given the way our friend Nath died, this quote in particular felt poignant:

The third escape is that of strength and energy. It consists in destroying life, when one has understood that it is an evil and an absurdity. A few exceptionally strong and consistent people act so. Having understood the stupidity of the joke that has been played on them, and having understood that it is better to be dead than to be alive, and that it is best of all not to exist, they act accordingly and promptly end this stupid joke, since there are means: a rope round one’s neck, water, a knife to stick into one’s heart, or the trains on the railways; and the number of those of our circle who act in this way becomes greater and greater, and for the most part they act so at the best time of their life, when the strength of their mind is in full bloom and few habits degrading to the mind have as yet been acquired…

Reading through the whole thing I thought Thomas Nagel’s The Absurd is probably a good response to it or at least a place from which to see the types of mistakes he’s making. Tolstoy was in a really bad mood. A long mood for sure but a mood and that was his fundamental problem which led to all this rationalistic churn he couldn't seem to find his way out of rationally.

And that oddly enough brought me back to this Camus quote from the Myth of Sysiphus which hits on the problem nicely:

Great feelings take with them their own universe, splendid or abject. They light up with their passion an exclusive world in which they recognize their climate. There is a universe of jealousy, of ambition, of selfishness, or of generosity. A universe—in other words, a metaphysic and an attitude of mind.

The thing is, when you’re feeling good, it doesn’t matter if life is meaningless. And if you’re feeling bad, it doesn’t matter if life is meaningful. What matters is how you feel and you'll take that feeling into your rationalizing (as our Scottish friend likes to say, "reason is the slave of the passions").

And I've rarely had rationalizing get me out of a mood. To get out of my long mood I needed art (flow) and I needed a lot of it. I needed a change of practice.

(If only there was a balm, we could call it mood-be-gone. This is why my psychotherapist aunt is always trying to get people to take drugs.)

the things you aspire to are no longer available

That to me is the crux of the midlife crisis.  Not all of us go through it but I'm in that age range and I can speak to it a bit.

For a while there I was just done.  It wasn't that I was depressed but I was sad and increasingly unwilling to put up with much nonsense at all.  And as you well know, this life throws a lot of shit at us so an unwillingness to put up with nonsense can be incapacitating.

My cousin Chris died and his death wiped the horizon.  The possibilities for the future changed.  Things I thought would eventually happen with him and his family were no longer going to happen.  I'm not the kind of guy who tries to have a lot of expectations and I don't believe in doing much planning for that reason (though I do a lot of contingency planning).  However, even someone like me has unwitting expectations in place that apparently can be shattered at a moment's notice.

Chris's death wasn't the only disappointment I experienced.  Professionally I was successful but increasingly irritated by the work and rolling that same rock up that same hill again and again.  When you're a cog in a company machine the value of your work is contingent upon other people's values and ability to deliver.

To say I'm disappointed in others is an understatement.  They've given up the game.  At this point it also seems evident the game was rigged from the beginning, we won't as a group overcome some really significant problems.  The snowball that brought us here has been rolling a long time and it's really picking up steam.  This problem requires significant re-framing.

When it comes to health, you start to see it at 40, sometimes earlier, sometimes a bit later but you'll start to see the signs of your inevitable demise.  And weird shit like hairs that grow who knows where and why (Ear lobe hair, what the fuck is that for?).  You get to the point that you must exercise (your exercise routine will likely be unique to your body) in order to just keep basic functionality going and you know it will get worse.

Long ago I aspired to create something inspired that would speak across generations.  I wanted to create a great work.  Now that just seems futile, the future isn't what it used to be.  

So I found myself in that space and started to put my energy into artistic expression because it's an easy spot for me to find intrinsic value.  I poured and poured myself into that and all the sudden I'm ready to be a good cog again.  

Phew.