“I can’t wait for this day to be over”…..
“I can’t wait for this week to end”…
“I just want midterm season to end”…
“I can’t wait for this year to be over”…
These statements are so normal, so overused, so mundane in our daily lives. We say them without even thinking about them; we say them without pausing to ponder on their implication.
“I can’t wait for my life to be over”
Woah. That’s extreme.
Right.
But how is it any different from any of the previous statements?
No, like, I just want to have the good moments you know. The moments I feel truly alive. Because I definitely don’t feel alive when I am finding the solid as y=x^3 is rotate around y=x ya know.
How often do those moments happen? When you really feel alive?
Uhh, occasionally. Pretty rare, tbh.
Let’s assume we will all live until 80, hoping that we don’t burn the planet to the ground in the next century or so. But out of all those 80 years, how many years do we actually live? Life is often compared to a roller coaster, so how many of those moments are the moment when you’re at the top of the vertical fall? How many moments are the big moments: falling in love, walking across the stage, walking down the aisle, holding your child for the first time? Not that many, compared to the mundane moments when you’re stuck at the traffic, and if you’re a New Yorker, sitting through yet another MTA delay, when you think you will get to relax after you finish this one assignment, but right after you hand it in you have another Lab report to write and then you think you will really live after this semester ends but then there is yet another semester and it seems like you’re always just waiting. Waiting for the traffic to move, waiting for the class to end, waiting for the semester to end, waiting for this year to end. Waiting for your life to end. Waiting to live, and in that, waiting to die.
In many ways, our lives can be compared to that of Sisyphus—the absurd hero of Greek mythology. Sisyphus, upon fucking something up, was punished by the Gods(?) to raise a huge ass rock up the mountain, only to watch it roll down and push it up that mountain again, forever. For eternity, pushing a rock up the mountain, knowing that all his hard work, is eventually for nothing. Nothing will stop the eventual oblivion. Sounds familiar?
Betty Friedan once wrote, “Each suburban wife struggle with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night—she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question – “Is this all?” Haven’t we all though? Havent we all had that moment in a seemingly mundane afternoon after class? Even for people who have apparently more “important” jobs, isn’t it the same? Those same classes over and over again, same flights, same codes, for most of our fleeting lives. Very few top of the roller coaster moments. Too many moments spent just existing, very few moments lived.
Now if we think about it, every moment in our life when we are wishing for a different moment (which is pretty often), we are wishing our life away. In search of something better, something of higher meaning or purpose ( whether it is being at a particular place in our careers or the desire to go to heaven) we are forgetting to live. We are living for the next A (or if you’re in Engineering, for the next C+), and then the next A and then the next thousands and just like that, it’s over. It’s a paradox really, in the illusion that we will get to live someday, we forget to live right now.
Here is the thing though, most of our life is going to be those mundane moments when we are grinding to finish the next assignment or waiting in the never ending line in Union Sq Trader Joe’s .
Does that mean we don’t live most of our already fleeting lives?
David Foster Wallace in his famous convocation speech talked about how two fishes had to be reminded what water was as they forgot its existence because they were always surrounded by it.
“This is water, this is water”, he wrote.
Just like those fishes, we need the reminder too. In those moments when we forget it, those moments when we want the clock to move a little faster, those moments when we want to be anywhere but where we are, in those moments you can’t stop the voices in your head--
This is life, this is life.
Our lives are not something distant, it is something that is happening right now. It is this moment. And no matter how much it sucks, no matter how much it hurts, it is our life. This mundane moment is objectively going to last the same as the top of the world moment. But the difference is we will forget this mundane moment. We will forget most of our lives.
There is nothing to counteract that. The only thing that we can do is be conscious of it. When you’re in that 2 hour long lecture and you’d rather be ANYWHERE else, take a deep breathe and tell yourself “this is life, this life”. This moment deserves the same compassion, same love that you look back on your best memories with. Live it up. Living it up does not have to be a grand moment. It can be right now. Be conscious. Be here, now.
Going back to Sisyphus’s depressing ass story, Albert Camus, a French philosopher, in his book, The Myth of Sisyphus, writes :
“I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain. One always finds one’s burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”
“The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”
I don’t think anything has ever moved me as much as this quote. This quote is an inspiration for this piece, it is also central to how I (try to) live my life.
Albert Camus does not sugarcoat the fact that Sisyphus is stuck in most depressing situation ever. He doesn’t try to tell us that there is a higher meaning to life or that there is something that can transcend our existence. But he gives us the golden idea that maybe, life is not about getting to the top of the mountain. It is about the next step, it is about pushing the rock up the mountain knowing that it will fall. Life is not waiting for the weekend or waiting for the summer, it is about this moment, this instance when you’re suffering through CS homework. It is about living those mundane moments to the fullest. It is knowing that there is no higher meaning to life other than just life. It is about living the ordinary moments. Like when you get into the shower and there is literally no water pressure, but you still let your senses to submerge in the sound of water as it falls, and as it comes into contact with your skin and you feel each and every single droplet. It is about taking the moments you spend waiting to get onto the roller coaster and turning them into top of the world moments.
And maybe, a life lived for life itself is a life worthwhile.
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