As a young and mostly healthy person, did you ever have one of those days where you were walking down the street and all the sudden thought to yourself “What is the point of anything?” I have those days frequently these days. I don’t mean it in a sad way, but more of like seriously what is the point. Life is so short, goes by so fast, and much of it is shitty if not outright painful. There is very little impact to be made, and it usually ends up being negative. I often wonder whether it’s worth doing or accomplishing anything at all. Even just relaxing isn’t all that well, relaxing.
I remember when I was lying on the operating table and watching the doctors take out their power saws and tools they were about to use on me…they were getting ready to put me under, and I looked up at the fluorescent lights through the doctor’s silhouette and thought- realizing I had absolutely no conscious control over anything that would transpire from that point on..I thought to myself “Well, this could be it”.
And it was almost a relief. To think that things I struggled with and failed with and grappled with over the years, and others would remember me for that but that it wouldn’t matter since I wouldn’t even be here to worry about how I didn’t do this or that and how they would remember that. And since that’s something we all face at some point, what it the point of anything to begin with?
I was relieved to wake up of course. But I can’t escape the feeling…one which I’ve had over the last couple years…that nothing is truly worth doing. not love, not friendships, not reading, not writing, not eating, not working, not dreaming- absolutely nothing. Sometimes I see people get all worked up about something in their lives and I know they have either never had these thoughts or they repress them as I often do.
Think about it, I mean really, what is the point.
Footnote: I’ve often been criticized for being too inaccessible in my writing and other forms of art, setting aside the times when people have taken it upon themselves to arrogantly pontificate and completely misinterpret what I was going for, based on their own false assumptions(as opposed to just asking me.) So just this once I’m going to explain the chosen title of this entry. In the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life” Jimmy Stewart
has a run of bad things happen and in a stressed out moment wishes that he’d never been born. His guardian angel then shows him how awful the world would have been like without him and he realizes all the lives that he touched and improved. A title like “It’s a Wonderful life, in real life” represents a story similar in nature, but without all the 1940′s hollywood style, ghosts and angels ridden, warm and fuzzy happy endings business. Hey give them a break though, they just went through world war II, plus I love escapism more than anyone and would like to see more tangible real life versions of that concept
