The struggle for survival

Cancer.

It’s hard to think about death, certainly for the people you love, but even more so yourself. Every time a friend loses his entire family in a car crash, or a family member is diagnosed with a deadly disease, for a few days you reflect upon our mortality, and the overall pointlessness of human existence. 

And then it’s back to square one.

Survival doesn’t only mean to live, survival can be at many different levels. It’s not that hard to breathe, eat and shit, and that’s probably the reason why there are 7,000,000,000 of us infesting this beautiful planet. Survival can also be about living your life on your own terms, and that’s fucking hard.

Physical survival appears to be the first priority though, and the reason why people keep showing up at those jobs. Spiritual existence, in a completely non-religious sense, mostly takes second priority, exercised either by the wealthy by birth or the eccentrics by choice.

Of course there are people, millions of them, who literally struggle to survive each day, to breathe, eat and drink. For all intents and purposes, they are completely ignored here, because I’m not one of them, and since you are reading this, neither are you. As real as their problems may be, and as much of a bitch I may sound during this article, your own problems are always far more important than anybody else’s.

But the question still remains, as it has since the beginning of human consciousness. What is the meaning of life?

The more you ask this question, the more you realize that you shouldn’t have asked it in the first place, because it doesn’t end well. The more you research about the logic behind life, the clearer it becomes that there is none, apart from the continuation of it. Life exists so that there may be new life, whatever can’t make that happen for whatever reason goes extinct.

And that’s not a very uplifting thought, to know that your only purpose in the grand scheme of things is to stick your dick up a vagina, or maybe multiple vaginas, and watch copies of your DNA ask the same damn questions that you began with.

I think this is one of the reasons at the very base of the hatred against gays and lesbians, the fact that they are essentially giving the middle finger to the very thing that we appear to be designed for. Self-preservation can make you do dangerous things, especially when the self part is innately more about the species than just you.

But then again, what should you do? Sure the world is a fucked up place, and there’s no real reason for you to be here, but rather than wasting your time being gloomy about the banality of everything, why not have fun, enjoy your brief existence before you die?

It’s not as easy as it sounds.

If you are truly able to enjoy life, even with the knowledge that everything is bullshit and you don’t matter, either you are stupidly ignorant, or you have reached a level of transcendence that’s promised but never delivered by religion. Religions always appeals to the stupidly ignorant part of the above argument, it fills your brain up with illogical fantasies and childish narcissism, basically pulling a cloth over your eyes to blind you from the truth.

But it works.

And I think that’s why Thomas Gray said “Ignorance is a bliss”, being delusional, psychotic or psychopathic, but happy, is not a bad thing at all. There’s the obvious problem with “Ignorance is a bliss” though, which is that to understand that ignorance is a bliss, you first have to know enough to feel that way.

Which is why I completely understand the suicide mentality, and why people detest it so much. For a person, taking his own life is one of the easiest ways to get rid of this cycle of fucktardery, but that also makes others jealous, for not having enough conviction to follow your own brain to self-destruction,

I’ve been interested in existential nihilism lately, and trust me, it’s a rather fun subject for discussion. On the face of it, it appears to be completely agnostic to the entire idea of human existence, yet as you go deeper and deeper, you realize that consciousness is such a pain in the ass, not just for you or me, but for many many people through the course of history.

And that feels good, to know that you are not just some stupid retard sitting in a corner, hugging your knees, shouting expletives at the wall.

And so we reach the same question again, what the fuck should we do? “Follow your heart” seems to be a popular one, but that’s not only extremely vague, but also completely ignorant to the fickle-mindedness of a heart. My heart wants to watch ad-free TV all day, but it also yearns to write about how stupid that is.

Doing what everyone else is doing also seems to work, for most people. Some others feel their own business does the trick for them. Money is a tricky bitch to control, and setting it up as end rather than a means generally leads to mayhem.

I’ve been trying to cut myself off from the world since a long time now. No news, papers, magazines or shit, haven’t watched a Bollywood flick in ages. The more friends I make on Facebook, the more I end up face-palming myself.

The middle path seems to make sense to me. Do what your heart desires, but don’t follow it blindly, factor in the wishes of those very close to you. Don’t run behind money, but have enough of it for when the shit hits the fan. The balance is incredibly tricky to maintain, but it’s not impossible.

But the fact is that life is composed of only a few moments of pleasure interspaced by vast expanses of despair. You grab onto those little moments, remember them, and then you die.

Alternatively, if this rambling of an unstable mind appears too idiotic to understand, follow Anuj Khurana’s advice about life.

Don’t waste so much fucking time trying to find meaning of life that you forget to actually live it.