Procrastination

Ed Ruscha, Sweets, Meats, Sheets, 1974.

Why does it seem like each of these blog posts begins with just me trying to procrastinate. (Don’t worry dear reader, this will not be a theme that continues on for much longer.) The adrenaline of fear is coursing through my veins, my mind numb, clickity clackity keyboard going fast … ah, the perfect circumstances in which to write a blog post.

Do I have anything deep or good to say today? Unlike the other posts … not really. But perhaps, that’s the deepest thing I could ever say?

I stumbled upon this quote from Atlas Shrugged again in my internet browsings today:

I remember sitting on my cold bathroom floor as I read this for the first time. Cathartic … dear reader, did you feel something similar as you read that post above?

Life is a beautiful joke. And we can choose to see it that way! Sure, it’s cruel—but isn’t it so wonderful that giraffes, narwhals, eggshells, and horses exist? How did the world even form into this curious enigma—whoever created it must have been insane. Insane, but having the most sublime fun while doing it! So isn’t it stupid to view the world as anything other than a true joy of existence? Why drag it down into stupid seriousness, and suffering, and futility …

Today I also read an excerpt from Albert Camus’s The Myth of Sisyphus (Thank you, dear AP Literature class, for this one). For the first time, I had a thought—Sisyphus had always seemed to be some doomstruck individual far removed from my own existence, but isn’t his fate just a representation of our human existence as a whole? We may not see it manifesting explicitly in our experiences, but that same Sisyphean fate is hiding underneath the way that all of our lives play out. We work, work, work to roll something up our hill—but as we stand at the top and see our stone finally reaching the peak, it falls back down again. Even after you experience the most sublime success at your goals, the next day comes—and you face a new set of challenges, misery, unfulfilled goals, suffering.

So maybe that’s why it’s important to know that nothing is ever, truly serious. Have a little smile on your face as you stand before your stone again, facing the hill that you must roll it up, up, up on. You might be rerolling it forever, and forever—but at least you can choose to have a little fun while you do it.