Growing up I always wanted my life to be extraordinary, like characters in the novels I lost myself in while trapped in the suffocating routine of an all-girls Presbyterian boarding school. For a while there, when things were really wild, it almost felt like I was. It was exhilarating and terrifying in equal parts. I made plenty of irrational decisions and ended up very, very tired. In comparison, my life is a lot more stable now and on the whole, I am probably a healthier and maybe a slightly less self-absorbed person.
Tempting fate, 2023 to 2024 was the most settled period of my life in at least a decade. I live in the same house. I am now into my third year at the same job. I have left the country only a handful of times for short work trips. I have been entirely mediocre at all of my hobbies and I still have all of my toe nails intact, the sorry lot that are left. I now own far too many material objects, including three and a half pairs of skis and even more frighteningly a three-seater couch. I fear I am becoming everything I never wanted to be. I fear I am becoming ordinary.
I still contemplate purpose and meaning. Some days I fantasise about quitting it all and heading for Timbuktu. On those days I wonder why I can’t just feel content with what I have, considering it is more than I could ever dream of when scrubbing potatoes in the basement of shitty American diner for 8€ an hour. But I don’t quit. Instead, on those days, I remind myself I have bills to pay and that even if I did quit it wouldn’t resolve my existential angst, just defer it to a different location.
However, I think my largely more settled outlook is partially due to no longer searching for external validation in the same way I used to. For a long time so much of my energy and ego centred around proving myself worthy. Worthy of what you ask? I still struggle to answer. Was I just born with a chip on my shoulder? It is not that I even feel particularly worthy of anything now. I just made peace with the fact that it doesn’t matter. The outlets I was attempting to prove myself with didn’t change fundamentally who I was, make me “better” than anyone else, or give me a lasting sense of fulfilment.
I learnt and understood the definition of arrival fallacy. A term that refers to the false belief that once you accomplish a particular goal, you’ll attain a sense of lasting gratification. That if you push yourself long enough, hard enough, and achieve some lofty goal like first class honours or running 100 km non-stop you will live happily ever after. You will suddenly be worthy of this life and everything in it.
Of course, that is as nonsense as it sounds, but it is surprising how easily highly driven personalities fall for the continuing trap of arrival fallacy. When achieving your first set goals doesn’t result in permanent affirmation you can just turn to the next goal with the same mindset. There are countless memes on the internet that are concerningly relatable such as “To all the type A perfectionists who are no longer getting validation from good grades in school… how’s the marathon training going?” Sometimes I wonder how much ‘human progress’ is based upon an unending search for fulfilment for individuals who weren’t hugged enough as a child. Elon Musk anyone?
Acknowledging arrival fallacy brings a new set of questions. Primarily, if the outcome of your goal isn’t going to result in lasting happiness – why try at all? At anything. Ever.
The solution touted by most articles is to “enjoy the process”. A cliché which I have heard so many times now it makes me nauseous. Not many people really like running hill intervals in the heat or reading boring text books. Sometimes the process just sucks, kind of like life, it doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing. That which is compelling doesn’t always have to be enjoyable, as the Oatmeal explains here. I don’t expect or want my life to be void of suffering, I just want that suffering to be for the right reason.
The difficulty with finding an answer to the follow up question of “what is the right reason?” and is that humans are notably terrible at predicting what will make them ‘happy’ in the future. There are countless scientific studies which demonstrate this. I barely know what breakfast cereal I really want—let alone what I need to do with my life and why.
Coming back from the depths of nihilism is hard. It’s hard to find peace even if you accept the existentialist view that life might be meaningless but you can still construct your own purpose. I find it hard to see purpose with any conviction if I admit that it is just a meaningless construct to help me pass the time. It is harder than it used to be to lose myself in my obsessions.
Something that does help me is the intricate details of this world: tiny wild flowers, birds, skeleton leaves, river stones, feathers I stumble across, the patterns different moss makes on rocks. Little treasures that surprise and delight me. Taking the time and having the awareness of how beautiful this world is on so many different scales seems to bring me joy without any requirement for purpose.
I was reading a Cormac McCarthy book the other day and there was a quote that stuck with me,
“Its general vacuity aside there seems to be a ceiling to well-being. My guess is that you can only be so happy. While there is no floor to sorrow.”
Which seems incredibly pessimistic as only McCarthy can be, but also entirely accurate when you consider that even billionaires seem to have trivial problems and mental breakdowns. It seems to help my chaotic brain to consider that perhaps I am somewhere near the peak of my well-being. That even though I still don’t really know what I am doing with my life and why, the reason I have stayed where I am is that I like it here, and while the temptation is always to strive for “more” that I might just be slamming my head against the ceiling. That maybe I have found some balance in my life that prevents me and my goldfish attention span from swinging wildly to extremes.
Also, I have to remind myself that it is not over. My life can and will still change. There will be unforeseen things both tragic and auspicious that will change the direction of my life. Who I am now is not who I will be in 10 years time. Unlike the characters in the novels, I, ideally, have a less definitive timeline. There is no happily ever after because the story of my life is still unfolding.