Absurdism and Success…
It’s 1997, I’m 27, livin in a los angeles downtown flop with the 10 members of my legendary art-punk band. I wake up on the floor, step barefoot over the syringes, vomit, maybe dog shit, and broken glass landmines all the way to the bathroom, shut the door. I see my wasted sad mohawked reflection in the mirror. Then go on a 2 hr rant screaming and crying at the mirror about how I'm a total loser, how my former friends are out of college, getting married and buying houses… and how the fuck did I become such a massive failure when I had such huge potential… I vent everything... spent... later I get shit faced drunk in the afternoon, and pass out on a couch…
I start to wake up… the other bands have shown up, there's a party in the house, somebody is screaming... or crying? It’s being amplified… wtf are they listening to? Then I realize… It's me…. I get up charge into the rehearsal room, one band is leaving, another is setting up. In between the band change my good friend Rich, (our lead singer), is playing a recording of my rant from earlier in the day, over the PA. Apparently he came home, heard me melting down, and snuck a mike under the door when it was happening. He recorded all my deepest most personal thoughts and fears, and played them to everyone I knew as a joke. Rich is laughing his ass off, as are the 50 or so other punks in the house, most of whom I thought were my best friends. Very funny.... I get suicidal, so I quit the band, move back home, get some counseling… and decide to become a counselor. In a year Rich will be very dead, people will say it was high blood pressure, I'll know better. Most of those other so called friends will die soon too, mostly from overdoses. I work and go to school, and after four years I buy a used RV and head out with no destination.
Fast forward 17 years… I'm 48, just about everybody I've ever known or been close to is dead... A few are still kickin around but I haven't spoken to them in 10 or more years...I got burned out on trying to save the world, now I have a good low paying job, I like it, my boss and all the people I work with are very cool, working here is fun and nobody ever quits this job. I have no family, no savings, few real friends, and I don't make enough for healthcare, taxes, or retirement, eventually one of the trifecta of doom will catch up to me. By most standards I am a textbook definition of the word failure.
But that's why I’m writing this… I see your posts about struggling with your own lives, the way you see yourselves, wondering if you’ve wasted your lives, having depression and panic attacks about it… all I wanted to say is… your wrong, and in my best sith emperor’s voice “about a great many things…”
Firstly, you can’t fail at life. Your alive, congrats your a success at life.
Secondly, nobody wins or is more successful at life than anybody else.
We all live, we all die, and then we all get buried or burned. After a hundred or so years… there are no differences between homeless and billionaire.
What you did from birth till those final moments, has absolutely zero meaning. In a few million years all the suns burn out, the heat death of the universe happens, and nothing you did or anything anyone has done means anything... ever ever again.
And lastly a little boat analogy… that should cure all depression and anxiety forever…
Each of us has our own little sinking ship, barring any great sea tragedy, the ship will stay afloat on average about 74-78 years, maybe a lot less, and never that much more. Some people start out with bigger more expensive boats, others get smaller more ugly boats but it doesn't matter… all the boats are sinking at roughly the same rate.
You see some people eating right and exercising, bailing hard and trying to patch the little holes with everything they got… it won't matter, they may make it a few more years than the rest of us, but in the end they sink like everyone else, and they usually suffer more because of it.
A few people work their asses off trying to decorate their ships and gather as much expensive shit as possible on their boats, it won't matter, pretty and rich sinks just the same as ugly and poor.
Some people dedicate their lives to picking up everybody else’s garbage and carrying it around on their boats while trying to talk everyone else into caring about the great mother ocean, or maybe talking about the great sea kingdom we all go to if we pick up some garbage before we drown. It’s useless, the ocean doesn't give a shit, eventually it will kill them all too, and the great sea kingdom afterlife is a friggin lie.
A few sad folks just sit on their boats and cry and cry, lamenting all the unfairness, maybe even jump out of their boats to end it all early… people pretend it’s a big deal… but nobody really cares much for long, they got their own sinking to do.
Still other people tie their boats together and screw and party as much as they can in some attempt to have as much fun as possible before the bubbles come, in the end the parties won't matter anymore than the crying did, it’s just a pointless waste of time like everything else is.
But a few of us, just a few, see what's going on. We just sit, we don't try and bail or patch, we don't decorate or save garbage, we don't try and party too much (just when sitting a little too long gets boring maybe). Mostly we just sit and smile at all the crazy shit people are doing all around us, it’s pretty funny if you can step out of all the sinking panic and just look, and when our boats do finally sink… those like me won't rage or cry, we’re not attached to anything, not even the boat…. we’ll just be relieved.
To me that's what it means to be an absurdist… you know that everything is pointless, and you know there’s no more reason to off yourself than there is to keep breathing, but your sorta driven to keep afloat, so you do, (maybe even just as a middle finger to the bubbles and/or the boat builder,) but without all the useless and overly dramatic attachments or frustrations everyone else seems to drag around with them.
I really don't care that some self satisfied assholes see me as a failure, or other judgmental assholes think I’ve wasted my life, those are just more really stupid people who have bought into the illusion that anything at all matters when your on a sinking ship that you can't stop from sinking. I’ll always have a much MUCH bigger smile on my face while sitting and watching those people sink…
So stop with the self-hatred, depression, and anxiety… Just sit, look, smile, be… you don't need to do anything else, and nothing else you might do will make any difference anyway.
Ta da.
It’s 1997, I’m 27, livin in a los angeles downtown flop with the 10 members of my legendary art-punk band. I wake up on the floor, step barefoot over the syringes, vomit, maybe dog shit, and broken glass landmines all the way to the bathroom, shut the door. I see my wasted sad mohawked reflection in the mirror. Then go on a 2 hr rant screaming and crying at the mirror about how I'm a total loser, how my former friends are out of college, getting married and buying houses… and how the fuck did I become such a massive failure when I had such huge potential… I vent everything... spent... later I get shit faced drunk in the afternoon, and pass out on a couch…
I start to wake up… the other bands have shown up, there's a party in the house, somebody is screaming... or crying? It’s being amplified… wtf are they listening to? Then I realize… It's me…. I get up charge into the rehearsal room, one band is leaving, another is setting up. In between the band change my good friend Rich, (our lead singer), is playing a recording of my rant from earlier in the day, over the PA. Apparently he came home, heard me melting down, and snuck a mike under the door when it was happening. He recorded all my deepest most personal thoughts and fears, and played them to everyone I knew as a joke. Rich is laughing his ass off, as are the 50 or so other punks in the house, most of whom I thought were my best friends. Very funny.... I get suicidal, so I quit the band, move back home, get some counseling… and decide to become a counselor. In a year Rich will be very dead, people will say it was high blood pressure, I'll know better. Most of those other so called friends will die soon too, mostly from overdoses. I work and go to school, and after four years I buy a used RV and head out with no destination.
Fast forward 17 years… I'm 48, just about everybody I've ever known or been close to is dead... A few are still kickin around but I haven't spoken to them in 10 or more years...I got burned out on trying to save the world, now I have a good low paying job, I like it, my boss and all the people I work with are very cool, working here is fun and nobody ever quits this job. I have no family, no savings, few real friends, and I don't make enough for healthcare, taxes, or retirement, eventually one of the trifecta of doom will catch up to me. By most standards I am a textbook definition of the word failure.
But that's why I’m writing this… I see your posts about struggling with your own lives, the way you see yourselves, wondering if you’ve wasted your lives, having depression and panic attacks about it… all I wanted to say is… your wrong, and in my best sith emperor’s voice “about a great many things…”
Firstly, you can’t fail at life. Your alive, congrats your a success at life.
Secondly, nobody wins or is more successful at life than anybody else.
We all live, we all die, and then we all get buried or burned. After a hundred or so years… there are no differences between homeless and billionaire.
What you did from birth till those final moments, has absolutely zero meaning. In a few million years all the suns burn out, the heat death of the universe happens, and nothing you did or anything anyone has done means anything... ever ever again.
And lastly a little boat analogy… that should cure all depression and anxiety forever…
Each of us has our own little sinking ship, barring any great sea tragedy, the ship will stay afloat on average about 74-78 years, maybe a lot less, and never that much more. Some people start out with bigger more expensive boats, others get smaller more ugly boats but it doesn't matter… all the boats are sinking at roughly the same rate.
You see some people eating right and exercising, bailing hard and trying to patch the little holes with everything they got… it won't matter, they may make it a few more years than the rest of us, but in the end they sink like everyone else, and they usually suffer more because of it.
A few people work their asses off trying to decorate their ships and gather as much expensive shit as possible on their boats, it won't matter, pretty and rich sinks just the same as ugly and poor.
Some people dedicate their lives to picking up everybody else’s garbage and carrying it around on their boats while trying to talk everyone else into caring about the great mother ocean, or maybe talking about the great sea kingdom we all go to if we pick up some garbage before we drown. It’s useless, the ocean doesn't give a shit, eventually it will kill them all too, and the great sea kingdom afterlife is a friggin lie.
A few sad folks just sit on their boats and cry and cry, lamenting all the unfairness, maybe even jump out of their boats to end it all early… people pretend it’s a big deal… but nobody really cares much for long, they got their own sinking to do.
Still other people tie their boats together and screw and party as much as they can in some attempt to have as much fun as possible before the bubbles come, in the end the parties won't matter anymore than the crying did, it’s just a pointless waste of time like everything else is.
But a few of us, just a few, see what's going on. We just sit, we don't try and bail or patch, we don't decorate or save garbage, we don't try and party too much (just when sitting a little too long gets boring maybe). Mostly we just sit and smile at all the crazy shit people are doing all around us, it’s pretty funny if you can step out of all the sinking panic and just look, and when our boats do finally sink… those like me won't rage or cry, we’re not attached to anything, not even the boat…. we’ll just be relieved.
To me that's what it means to be an absurdist… you know that everything is pointless, and you know there’s no more reason to off yourself than there is to keep breathing, but your sorta driven to keep afloat, so you do, (maybe even just as a middle finger to the bubbles and/or the boat builder,) but without all the useless and overly dramatic attachments or frustrations everyone else seems to drag around with them.
I really don't care that some self satisfied assholes see me as a failure, or other judgmental assholes think I’ve wasted my life, those are just more really stupid people who have bought into the illusion that anything at all matters when your on a sinking ship that you can't stop from sinking. I’ll always have a much MUCH bigger smile on my face while sitting and watching those people sink…
So stop with the self-hatred, depression, and anxiety… Just sit, look, smile, be… you don't need to do anything else, and nothing else you might do will make any difference anyway.
Ta da.
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