Getting older can be seen as a dreadful experience. When we are young, we feel as if things will get better as time passes, but then comes the truth for most of us around our mid-twenties that this is not the case. Things only get worse, your body slowly deteriorates, and you notice you are not quite as energetic as you once were. I can remember getting up in the morning and going to the park, and playing basketball for the entire day. Now, such a thought I find to be dreadful. I’m about to turn 28. Now, to most that would seem to be a still relatively young age, but to me, it’s the beginning of the spiral. The source of the optimism that I once had has begun to fade. When I was younger, I felt as if I had a plethora of opportunities in front of me to pursue, but not anymore. Can I become a doctor, probably, if I wanted to start working at 40? Can I become a professional athlete now that the ship has sailed after high school? Am I going to still be able to talk to young girls(young as in between 18 & 24) and they still find me attractive, or am I going to be that old guy pushing too hard?
Now comes the question of whether or not I accomplish anything worthwhile. Or have I just wasted my youth? Can I look back as I get older and say I lived a fulfilling life? I guess the answer to that question is both comparative and subjective. On one hand, am I comparing my life to other people around or people I see in the media? Secondly, am I comparing my life to an unrealistic, idealistic way in which my life should have turned out? The true answer is I don’t fully know, but I do feel at times I missed out on opportunities when I was young that I’ll never be able to get a chance at as I get older. I suppose the best thing for me to do is accept the fact that I am getting older, that one day I will die, this is just the process of life, how life has carried on on this earth since microbes first populated the earth.
Life is just a process that goes on. People overcome their childhood to reach adulthood, get married, have kids, and then they die, leaving their children to continue on to the same processes. Many people cope with this by using religion as a comfort, which is OK, I guess, but what about us who don’t have a god? Is there some alternative for us, some sort of spirituality that can help us as a leading light in this darkness we call life? Maybe we should just accept a materialistic world that has no real purpose.
To be human is something, I guess you just have to overcome, as spoken by Zarathustra. We all cling on to things to help us forget about life, whether it’s movies, watching our favorite television show, following our favorite sport team, reading a thrilling novel, are engaging in an addictive video game, these are all just distraction to the inevitable that someday we are all going to die, and the earth will continue to orbit the sun. just as some person who lived in China during the 12th century in a small village, had a family, was happy, suffered, and died. Yet I know nothing of this person, but I’m sure he existed just as trillions of other organisms existed on this planet.
But I guess this all doesn’t have to be negative. I recently came across the philosophy of optimistic nihilism, that the mere knowledge of the pointlessness of life can be our refuge. Why does it matter that your boss berated you for doing a bad job? What does matter is that you lost that pick-up game of basketball. What does matter is that you and your spouse of ten years are getting a divorce. Because to the eyes of the universe, none of it matters.
But I suppose these are just fleeting thoughts that some will embrace, some will reject, and some will be indifferent to.
Da Joanis Project 