Let’s begin with something that sounds terrible, and see whether it is.
You are going to die, and eventually no one will remember you. Your children might. Their children will have a few blurry stories, and after that, the water closes over the place where you were. Now, many people hear this and feel a cold wind blow through the room. But notice that the wind is blowing only if you think you are a separate thing that is going to be lost.
Who told you that you were?
Because I’d like to suggest that you’ve been sold a rather good hoax, and it isn’t the one the angry people on the internet are talking about. They say the hoax is that life has meaning. I say the hoax is that you are a little ghost locked inside a bag of skin, standing against a universe that doesn’t care about you. That’s the game of Lonely Self against Big Indifferent Cosmos, and it is a very convincing game. We’ve all been playing it since we were small.
But think of a wave. A wave doesn’t ask whether the ocean cares about it. It’s not outside the ocean, looking at it. The wave is something the ocean is doing, just as you are something the universe is doing, the way an apple tree “apples.” The universe didn’t fail to notice you. You are how the universe notices.
Now, the career, the status, the ladder. You’re quite right that there is no top. But look at how that works. We’ve made life into a kind of road, a journey to somewhere, and so we’re always anxious about arriving. But what do you do with music? Nobody plays a symphony to get to the final chord. If that were the point, the best conductors would be the ones who played fastest. Music is for playing. Dancing is not about getting to a particular spot on the floor. And your life, the whole absurd, ridiculous, wonderful thing, is not going anywhere. It is here.
We are so busy with the menu that we forget to eat the meal. We eat the menu. We chew on the paper: money, titles, followers, which are symbols of the real thing, and then wonder why we’re hungry.
And the “script.” Yes, you were handed one by your parents, your culture, and by dead philosophers. Of course you were. You can’t help it. Everyone starts as a puppet, because that’s how a child learns. The trick is not to cut the strings and stand around in a heap. The trick is to see the strings and realize you’ve been playing the role of the puppeteer, too. Then you can play the game with a certain lightness, like an actor who knows it’s a play. As Shakespeare’s Jaques said, all the world’s a stage. He didn’t say that to depress us. It’s rather freeing: if it’s a play, you needn’t be so terribly serious about it.
What about meaning? There’s a clever little trap here. You want to know the meaning of life, as if life were a word, and meaning were its definition. But a word means something other than itself. Does a flower mean something? Does a stream? Does music? There’s an old Zen answer: “Why do you ask?” Perhaps the question is like asking what a dance is for. Richard Feynman, who knew more about how the universe works than most priests know about God, said he saw no great purpose in it all, and yet he spent his life delighted by it. Nothing was spoiled for him. The flower was more astonishing for knowing what it was made of.
Now, the heavy part: freedom. It’s true you can’t blame anyone else. Sartre called it bad faith, when we say “I have no choice,” and it’s simply true that we do this constantly. But I’d add, gently: don’t turn that into a new way to beat yourself up. You’ll notice there’s a funny thing about choice. You didn’t choose to be born, or your genes, or your first language, or the century. In some sense, “you” are not an agent standing apart from all of this, making decisions. Your choices arise from the whole situation, you being part of it. So responsibility isn’t a heavy burden to be carried by a lone soul. It is what a living organism does when it responds. Take it seriously, but not solemnly. A great deal of damage is done by solemn people.
Then there’s the beloved temporary. Everyone you love will die. Yes. And so, you’re told, it’s sad. But it’s only sad if you thought the point was to keep it. A sunset isn’t a failure because it ends. Nobody leaves a sunset thinking, “What a waste, it didn’t last.” The very impermanence is what makes it vivid. We ruin things by trying to hold on to them, like grasping water, and finding it runs between our fingers. Hold it lightly, and it stays in the hand, for as long as it stays.
As for Sisyphus, pushing his boulder: I rather like him. But I’d gently take away the fist. Camus has him raging, defiant, and that’s one way of doing it. I’d suggest another: he stops treating it as a punishment at all. Then it’s just walking, and a hill, and an afternoon with a stone. The gods are disappointed, because the torture needed his resentment to work.
Now, a serious word, because I’d be a poor friend otherwise. If you’re in a place where you’re thinking of ending your life, don’t take any of this as a philosophy to settle the question. Philosophy is a poor doctor. Talk to a person, a real one, tonight. See a doctor. Take the medicine if it’s offered. The darkness you feel may not be a discovery about the universe at all; it may be weather in the nervous system, and weather changes. And please do not suppose you’re alone in the cosmic sense. That is exactly the illusion that can feel most real when you’re suffering.
So what do we do? Do very little, rather well. Stop trying to find the meaning, and stop trying to manufacture it by gritted teeth. Notice instead that you’re already here, already awake, already in the middle of it, and that the middle is quite a remarkable place.
Don’t chase the boulder. Don’t fight the void. Don’t wait for the top of the ladder.
Just this. This is it. You’d better get the message while the music’s still playing.
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