Anatomy of a torment

I often wonder whether I am very different from how people exist. People chase goals. Relational, academic, and more. Their goalposts shift often, because there are comparisons and a sense of competitiveness. What drives their chase is immaterial; what they chase is material.

I chase a feeling of pristinity. I chase a feeling of adherence. I do not adhere to societal norms, and I do not spare a thought for what is stated under the garb of morality, whether good or bad. I chase a feeling of adherence nonetheless. What it is that I must adhere to is not well defined. What level of pristinity I seek is not defined. Nonetheless, I chase.

We were born into this world randomly, we will perish eventually and absolutely, and in between we exist meaninglessly. Living feels like a lie between the two truths of non-existence. The universe may be indifferent to our existence, but in order to live, we choose our own purposes. So whatever the chase may be, as long as it keeps us content and absorbed, we live.

We need a purpose in order to continue existing, and for us that purpose is a chase, a pursuit. Whether it is material or not is immaterial. Sisyphus never chose the rock, but he did choose the labour. It was futile, and he was happy. Meaning, he knew and recognised the futility, and yet chose to do it. Do we know the futility, recognise it, and still choose to pursue?

How we are handed the rock is immaterial. Under what premises we are handed it is immaterial. If existence itself is a lie between the two poles of non-existence, then to continue existing is the labour. Whether in rebellion or not, the act of choosing that labour, of pursuing something as futile and fleeting as existence, must still provide some sort of contentment.

What if the satisfaction of arriving somewhere while chasing a goal goes amiss? We need either a level of satisfaction at the end of the pursuit or satisfaction in the labour we put into it. Take away both, and it is torment.

Finding happiness in futility is not a practical human endeavour, however romanticised it might be. We are emotional at our core, however logical we might appear. So take away the explicit satisfaction to be derived, and implicitly the effort too, and the pursuit becomes meaningless.

To transcend the bounds of how we exist and simply exist is analogous to enduring suffering while feigning contentment. If our existence were in defiance of how we are expected to exist, then such existence would still give us a sense of achievement . Whether we claim it or not.

Take away emotion and reward, even fleeting reward, and our existence stands in contradiction to why we chose to exist in defiance in the first place. Sisyphus observed the futility, but he would still have derived some meaning from the effort; otherwise the effort itself would be futile. To fight meaninglessness with more meaninglessness, or to fight it by submitting to futility without deriving any satisfaction while doing so, Is meaningless.