Existential Dread

What does it mean to be alive . . . . I ask myself everyday, when I breathe in car and second-hand cig fumes; when I read about another way capital has poisoned us, our food, our water, our social forms; when I read about another horrific crime an elite class got away with; when I witness the senseless violence fear and terrorism that shapes our societies. People I speak to say they just don't like to think about it. It gets too depressing. They find it more helpful to focus on the now and surviving : how they will make it through this day with enough to get to the next. The effort to answer “what am I doing with my limited time here” makes many despair. Am I wasting my life? Did I waste my life? What was it for? Am I happy? Who am I I understand. I go through many bouts of depression; circumstance and intention have shoved these questions in my face my whole life. My young adult years (12-23) were spent in isolation. Grappling with the trauma I’d inherited, scrutinizing myself and my evils, desperately searching for ways out. In resisting this line of questioning –fleeing from the weight and discomfort of deriving meaning for yourself- you allow the cruel, the opportunists to answer for you: you exist to serve, produce, consume, suffer.   Growing up with a simultaneously neglectful and micro-managing abusive mother, I have issues with authority. Namely, I cannot stand hypocrisy, cruelty, incompetence, and stupidity. It was only natural I would spit on their social order. I exist to free the world around me I ask, Is this the meaning of life? when I see happy pups running in the Common; when I see little kids in snow gear waddling through the slush; when I bike through the miles of beautiful trails and nature, spotting the murals, the art, the detail people poured into a city they love. Contemplating the meaning of life and one's own existence is not inherently depressing and paralyzing. We are paralyzed and afraid because we live in a social world constructed in the most inane and cruel ways. We live farces that produce misery; even the excess hoarded by the wicked is poisoned fruit. Many die more miserable than the poorest among us: All the material wealth in the world comes at a cost. Your soul. Community. Purpose. Satisfaction. Contentment. Joy. You hate asking yourself what the meaning of your life is because you work for faceless superiors, producing in menial repetitive ways, day in and out. To afford the housing you must have to keep all the crap you're told to buy, year after year bc everything breaks. And if you're not consuming, you're sabotaging the economy (just like how millennials killed x). You run endlessly behind bills, rent, food, medical, the car you need to get to the job you hate. Meanwhile the nagging voice grows: what about the microplastics. What about the increasing storms or floods or droughts or fires? What about, what about, what about . . . What am I doing with my life? Every time I sit to write my vision for the present, the future What am I doing with my life? While I complete my 20, 30 mile loops of the city. What am I doing with my life? While I bake treats to share, while I scoop cat litter, while I wash dishes. I asked it while a cop stopped me in Georgia, where a karen accused me of stealing her welfare check from her mailbox, on my bike trip from Boston Ma to Austin Tx. The absurdity of it all made me want to cry-laugh. I graduated from college, unsure of what any of it meant if the world did not care to iterate and improve. The question shaped my degree, Critical Systems Studies, interrogating the very earth as I dug to the origin of our problems. I asked it during my ten mile runs from the Upper West through to Brooklyn. While I ran across the East River at 4 am during the covid years, I thought about the thousands of people who built these bridges. How could they have ever possibly lifted all this material and suspended it in the sky!?! The unnamed faceless masses altered the city’s identity forever. They did not get the recognition nor reward their efforts merited. What . . .? Who, why, me, us . . . ? How would the question change for you, for all of us, if we spent days creating communities and mending the earth? We could spend our lives working with kids, adults, and animals to restore balance. We could focus our lives on learning, teaching, preserving traditions in the crafts, creating beautiful art that moves us . . . Our coastlines are forever changed. We can influence the nature of the change: nurseries for overfished species, rehab zones for ecosystems and injured wildlife, linked by bike trails and scenic walks. During the summers, our cities can spotlight their neighborhoods with city wide games and festivities; in the winters we’d slow down, gather together to preserve and cook, to enjoy the darkness with warm drinks and new year celebrations. Times Square could become the world’s largest theater, a massive art gallery, an immersive singular experience. Or it can remain a soulless indictment of liberalism/capitalism. If pondering the meaning of life leaves you depressed, it is a signal to take our lives back.