Is This All There Is?
Is this all there is?
Whenever I accomplish anything, both honourably large and pleasurably small, I’m always offered that lingering emptiness. And I always take it.
It usually arrives shortly after the confetti drops and the trumpets sound. The noise of celebration fades out and I’m left alone. The question grows louder. And all of the accolades I could ever possibly acquire shrink in the face of this one thought: that yes, this is all there is.
Just a series of goals and accomplishments and triumphs and failures and mistakes and lucky breaks. That’s life. Nothing in particular will fill that hole. It makes you want to break away from it all — to drift further and further into a purely hedonic existence. A pure savouring of the present as is. Wouldn’t that be nice? To wake up fully content with who you are and where you’re heading. I’m quite envious of my dog for this very reason.
But it soon becomes painfully apparent that such a life is largely outside of the capacities of an individual socialized into a system that is reliant on our profitable struggle towards finding meaning and identity. I mean there’s an entire industry of self-help books and cultural…
