On Direction

Life was much simpler when I was a teenager, or at least that is how my memory remembers it. Funnily enough, I do recall being equally miserable then, as I am now, but just with a different flavour of misery.

Nostalgia truly is a false God.

Your 20s are a decade of failure, and they should be. You set a goal, strive, meander, and more often than not miss the mark. However the next time you try you don’t strive for the same goal again, but for something larger—and then likely fail again. You fail again, but end up surpassing the original goal—not that it matters to you anymore, of course.

Repeat the cycle for a few years and soon you find yourself doing better than your wildest youthful speculations, and yet not feeling like you’ve done anything properly at all. And so I find myself at this incredible junction in life where while I seem to be “winning” by all metrics of society, I don’t know what it means to win or even what games to play?

Ironically enough none of this is original. Humanity across generations has dealt with these existential problems and has come up with a myriad of answers. Yet these cannot be merely known to remedy the spiritual ailment. Each one of us must wrestle with them ourselves to understand them. Us monkeys sure do love reinventing the wheel.