Words turn me away scornfully as I come calling for help, seeking only the company of a fellow spirit whose heart, soul, and mind feel as isolated and in need of contact as my own. Would that these clumsy, broken sentences could convey just the state of mind I’ve been in this week. The frustration, the worry and obsession, fears of inadequacy and hours of pensive rumination. This is how I pass my time, fishing vainly through the stagnant depths of my dusty mind for a way to say something, a way to close the gap between you and me just a fraction more. Being human, do we not have enough in common? Why should we exist in mutual silent ignorance, uncaring and inattentive to each other, when social relationships have been shown time and time again to be the only sure-fire path to happiness? Sartre proposed that Hell is other people. I find it fitting that Heaven should be other people as well. This sort of balanced contradiction, although it may seem baffling at first, is actually quite characteristic of the functioning of the universe. Every thing has its two sides, its potential for good or ill use, and although few things can be more harrowing than helplessly watching the disintegration of all of one’s friendships, nothing can be more satisfying or fulfilling than seeing these relationships through to their culmination.
Existentially, the meaning of life is to create meaning, and the first facet of reality that all people assign significant meaning to is their own selves. This has always been the case, before money was, before laws were, before art or science or any of the things that we think are important ever existed, people meant something. But now that we’ve crowded our brains with so much concern for economics and entertainment, BMW’s and business, we’ve forgotten just how much. A sports fan will admire and idolize an athlete he has never met and disregard his own wife. A connoisseur of fine art will bid millions on an established masterpiece before sparing a single thought for the starving artists of today, brushes held loosely in emaciated fingers, shaping something we don’t yet know but will never forget. And it is the objects we love and want, the trophies and material justifications, our too-fast cars and too-fancy televisions. Societal expectations of physical comfort, affluence, and social prominence have become unwittingly ingrained into our personalities, overshadowing a simple truth and misleading us to seek satisfaction in such irrelevancies as vintage cars and collector’s items.
Seriously, has Donald Trump ever looked happy? Think about it. I know it’s a tired old cliché that money can’t buy happiness, and whenever somebody today says so their audience has become so desensitized to the damn adage that the words run in one ear and out the other. Sure money can’t buy happiness, we say as if we believe it, but it can definitely buy everything else, right? Check enough things off of your list of life goals and it’s only a matter of time before the Porsche and big screen develop into happiness, or at least contentment.
Except they won’t. To append the old saying somewhat, money can’t buy happiness, friends, love, youth, accomplishment, sunsets, or the exhilaration of looking out the window early on a beautiful summer morning and knowing the world is your playground. Money can’t buy an hour shared with a loved one, or the look on her face when you put fresh, aromatic flowers in her hands. Money can’t buy forgiveness, or second chances. Money can’t buy the unquestioning support of your friends and family.
But it’s all we care about, so confused are we.
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