This short story has a big meaning behind it, it is from the perspective of an older man with deep depression and it really makes you think about the shortness of life and what us humans need in order to find what it is we all seem to be searching for: happiness. Happiness is not something you find under a rock or hidden within the clouds.. it is something we must learn to cultivate on our own. This older man wasn’t able to do so, even after living a great life:
I recall a time–some point of my life that I’m uncertain of–when things seemed so bright, everything so exciting and full of life. You see, when we are young, we set off like pilots of grand jet planes that are set up with newest gadgets, latest gear, and we are prepared to race across the sky, see how far we can go. Then, somewhere along our travels, we realize that the quest we set out for is far beyond our control. Our planes hit turbulence and sway us in every direction, our gadgets don’t work for us the way we need them to, our steering is off and we lose sight of how to direct our planes onto the right path again. Adolescence is a confusing, unruly time when everybody is trying to jump off the plane.
Me, an older man at 64 let go of the steering wheel years ago. What happens, happens and what doesn’t, doesn’t. I no longer have the energy to care. Security of any kind has always been an illusion. Things are always changing, nothing is set in stone. You can have it all and lose it all even quicker. Just as I have. I’ve loved and I’ve lost a lot more. More than any human should have to in a lifetime.
I recall my younger, highly ambitious self and how passionately I set my sights on the future and how far I could go in this world, to become the person I assumed I had to be in order to be successful. I thought I had to define myself by something or I’d be nothing. All the basic aspirations that most of us strive for circled around my head on a daily: A healthy family, a house up on the hill, security for my family, a wife that loved me and stuck by my side, a rewarding career, a high status, and one day success for my children. I wanted to be the best of the best. The charasmatic guy that could walk into any room and steal the spotlight. I wanted it all.
I believed if I planned and tried hard enough, I would get everything I’ve ever wanted. And I did. But it didn’t feel nearly the same as I expected it to. Now, that my wife has passed, as well as my youngest son, and my grown children don’t need me anymore, it is the present moment that now burdens me.
I find myself with conflicting, unforeseen, emotions. I am pleased for what I have accomplished and I am fortunate for what I have shared with the people I love the most, I am proud of what my children have accomplished as well, but my heart seems to hold an almost contorted feeling of how all of it meant nothing. Life is a forever changing, puzzling road to nothing.
Life is not about nurturing your dreams and wanting it enough, building, and planning. It’s about not knowing what roads are going to present themselves, about expecting the unexpected and knowing everything is always changing, and being okay with that some how. I’m having a harder time now, more than ever before, being okay with that.
We all share an awareness of life being short but still, most people brush that thought out of mind and live as if there are endless tomorrows, and I, myself used to be the same way. If we couldn’t deceive ourselves about death, we would not care so passionately about the outcome of a hockey game, the cure to a disease, the plot of our favorite show, the blatherings of politicians or a thousand other things that actually meant nothing when we compared it to the inevitable reality that creeps up on all of us eventually. I no longer feel shielded by that illusion, I feel naked and wide open.
There are so many stages in our lives, it’s as if we live several different lives just in our one lifetime. When I was a boy, my dad would take me to the ball park every weekend, we would watch a game or sometimes just throw the ball and shoot the shit. He always got us icecream afterwards and told me not to tell my mother. Even in the the cold Nevada winters we would go and dad would make a small ice rink for the kids to play on. Afterwards we would go get hot chocolate. I remember feeling as if I was the luckiest boy in the world and that as life went on this feeling would only grow. I presumed if these little things make me feel so grand now, that all the other luxuries that I seen adults indulging in, would only help exceed my happiness.
I remember my father telling me that he used to go to the same ball park when he was just a boy and he remembers feeling so small in such a big world. He told me as he got older that feeling dissipated when he learned that we are all unique individuals that are all a little confused, and even lost at times. He explained that we are all just getting through day by day, seeking for answers and purpose as we go. There is no reason to ever feel small because we are all small individual parts that make up something bigger than we could ever fathom.
I never understood what he meant back then about feeling small because the only time I remember feeling so full of light, and alive was when I was a boy. I felt like I was on top of the world. I presumed that maybe a world lay beyond this one, maybe even heaven, but we couldn’t count on it, so I wanted to get my little hands on everything I could while I could because this could be it. And it didn’t scare me but instead excited me. I couldn’t wait to see all I could accomplish in one lifetime.
Now, that I’m older, that feeling of being small lingers and I can’t seem to shake it. Most people are sucked into the fragile illusion of immortality, that served as a defense against the unthinkable.
These days I can’t help but spend so much of my time seeing through that illusion.
I’ve had my family, house up on the hill, I’ve switched careers 3 times in order to find the right fit, the one that rewarded me mentally and financially. I’ve met some amazing people, shared many great memories, traveled to many places, dined on some exquisite cuisines, watched my kids grow up and live life on their own, met my grandchildren. I’ve loved and I’ve lost, failed and succeeded, I’ve hurt and been hurt, I’ve gained knowledge on almost everything that interests me, and now what?
I’ve made this “living” for myself and have no clue what to do with myself in it. I feel a sense of dread every morning when my alarm goes off. I push snooze for an hour, sometimes two, before dragging myself out of bed. Because when it’s all been said and done, life is boring. We have our materialistic things to distract us from the boredom and when that isn’t enough, what is? Pills?
Sit in a room full of people you know but have nothing in common with, you realize how boring and pointless all of this is. The uncomfortable silence is almost better than the fake chit-chat and small talk just to rid of the discomfort. This makes me more uncomfortable. We are all faking it. There are a few people in this world that we will be able to share our full hearts and souls with, and even them can make us feel alone sometimes. Everyone else makes me feel as if I am an island stranded in the middle of ocean.
I have always been indifferent to most people, they just don’t seem to understand my humor, nor my thought process, including my own kids. Janine, my wife seen me. Other than her, I have to put on a mask to show face with the world. And now that I have it all, I don’t see a point in pretending anymore. Who am I trying to impress?
I have accommodated so many people, walked on eggshells, nodded and agreed, been the listener, the shoulder to lean on, the friend my whole life. But when I’m alone in my house day in and day out, I realize I have no one I can call up. I certainly don’t want to burden my children. I can only ask them to go for a coffee or stop by for dinner so many times, as they give me excuse after excuse, before I realize they have better things to do.
I have my materialistic things to distract me too and they have always been enough. But now, my books aren’t even enough to distract me anymore. Everyday is a countdown until nighttime when I can jump in bed, fall into the dream world and forget it all.
Who really knows what true happiness is? Not the conventional word but the naked terror. Is there ever an ending or do we continue to search indefinitely? I myself, have given up looking because I realize that happiness or meaning is not something that is sitting under a rock waiting to be found. It is something we must cultivate by searching for the preciousness of the everyday moments, the small things, the ordinary miracles. I no longer behold the world before me in wonder in gratitude as I did as a boy and I find it hard to find a reason to cultivate anything.
If happiness is just a state of mind that we choose for ourselves, a way of being that we cultivate from one moment to the next, then I have failed miserably in doing so. I presumed things may have gotten better the more I tried to distract myself, but nothing has gotten better. I feel like I have been alive for hundreds of years, I’m exhausted, and fed up with trying to brush off this reality I know: there is no point. It all boils down to physics and mathematics. All one big cosmic mistake. I’m sick of pretending and I cant wait to one day soon, be relieved from the necessities of self I feel here. I can’t wait to finally be free.
If you are feeling a lack of hope, as if it is a burden to get out of bed everyday, please seek medical attention. With the medicines we have these days, no one should ever feel this way. There is nothing wrong with you for needing a little help, there is so much help these days and there is no reason for you to ever feel like giving up. There is always something new to do, to read, to see, to experience. Life can be beautiful again, I promise.
This is something everyone in the world should hear or read at some point in their lives. “David Foster Wallace‘s 2005 commencement speech to the graduating class at Kenyon College, is a timeless trove of wisdom.”
Here’s how it starts:
This is Water
“Greetings parents and congratulations to Kenyon’s graduating class of 2005. There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?”
This is a standard requirement of US commencement speeches, the deployment of didactic little parable-ish stories. The story thing turns out to be one of the better, less bullshitty conventions of the genre, but if you’re worried that I plan to present myself here as the wise, older fish explaining what water is to you younger fish, please don’t be. I am not the wise old fish. The point of the fish story is merely that the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about. Stated as an English sentence, of course, this is just a banal platitude, but the fact is that in the day to day trenches of adult existence, banal platitudes can have a life or death importance, or so I wish to suggest to you on this dry and lovely morning.”
I’m not going to write the entire thing out because it is all over the internet but please, please either go read it or listen to it. It is a MUST read for everyone!
Full transcript: https://fs.blog/2012/04/david-foster-wallace-this-is-water/
& The Video:
Check out some of my other posts if this one interested you:
