Delight in the Pointless – The Cure for the Pointless Life

What Was the Point?

1994 was a big year for me, although I would have bitterly disagreed with such an assessment at the time. I spent most of that period obsessed with the pointlessness of my life. I would write these drunken song lyrics (even though I didn’t have a note in my head), stories, and even suicide notes where the core theme was the meaninglessness of things.  You could say, I was a child of my time (as this was the same year that Kurt Cobain committed suicide) but perhaps mercifully for mankind, the only audience for my dark observations was the bin.

‘Here we are now, entertain us’

Nirvana

By 1994, I had become dependent on the outside world to provide me with meaning and purpose . This philosophy was summed up beautifully by Kurt Cobain when he demanded ‘here we are now, entertain us’. This dependency on life to keep me engaged  was a doomed project from the start. Just as a drug addict develops a tolerance to a drug, so too does the mind need increasingly bigger hits to stay interested in life. Which meant that by my early twenties, I felt jaded, cynical, and betrayed.  As the robot Marvin, from the ‘Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy’ summed up so well, ‘life, don’t talk to me about life’.   

The Well-Travelled Flea

In a desperate attempt to keep life entertaining, I would move from place to place. I traveled the world over the next few years. The problem was that while new scenery and culture could only temporarily reignite my interest in life, I would soon get used to it. The magic would wear off, and I would be back to square one.

As a monk once remarked, I was like one of those flea-infested dogs you will often see if you visit a temple here in Thailand who alternate their time moving around and scratching themselves. I would try to relax into a new place, but it wouldn’t be long before the old fleas would start to bite, and I would have to move again. It took me a long to recognize that I was taking the fleas with me.

I moved from place to place, from one group of friends to the next, and from job to job.  All of the time looking for the right situation that would fix me.  All I needed was to find my place in life, and then all would be well. Of course, no such place existed. The problem was me, or to be more specific, my way of relating to life.

My Biggest Mistake

One may know the world without going out of doors.

One may see the Way of Heaven without looking through the windows.

The further one goes, the less one knows.

Tao Te Ching

My biggest mistake was my failure to see how the value of each moment is completely dependent on how I relate to that moment. It is not about what is happening but about my ability to appreciate what is happening.

Before the age of seven, I had no difficulty delighting in life. It wasn’t that my situation was particularly wonderful back then, I wasn’t living in a pleasure dome or anything like that, it was just that I related to things differently.

As a child, silly things like the noise made by a playing card spinning against the spokes of a bicycle was enough to keep me entertained for hours. That was all that was needed. Later, my adult self would view such activity as pointless, but by then my relationship with reality had completely changed.

The Fear of a Pointless Existence is the Enemy

Some might say (and I used to think this way too) that we have to grow up, and part of this is the recognition that things need to have a point in order for them to be worthwhile. There needs to be a rational reason for doing things, and the rules about what ought to make us happy are there for us all to see. Making more money, self-improvement, being a productive human, and becoming more knowledgeable are all productive ways of using our time – there is a point to such activities whereas delighting in the sound of a playing card hitting a bicycle spoke just doesn’t fit the criteria.

The problem for me was that it eventually became obvious that ‘making good use of my time’ worked more like a distraction than actually offering a point to my life. I’m not saying that such things are bad, but after a while, they felt about as meaningful as a dog chasing his tail (at least the dog looks like he is having fun). I would develop a tolerance to the latest self-improvement project, and I would then need to find something new. The reward of a meaningful satisfying existence was always over the next mountain.

I had become hooked, and my addiction to ‘productive ways of using my time’ meant I was further away from a point to life than ever. It go so bad that I couldn’t even enjoy my days-off work because I needed to be doing something productive.

Delight in the Pointless

I’m glad to say that I no longer have any fear of a pointless existence. For life to be satisfying, all I need to do is relate to it in the right way. It is not the job of life to entertain me ( I now see such thinking as incredibly arrogant), but my job to appreciate what is there. There doesn’t need to be a point to anything – just the simple delight a child would experience upon hearing the sound of a playing card hitting the spokes of a bicycle. Everything I need to delight in life is already here, and it is not something that needs to be earned or justified.

As the poet David Whyte says:

The kettle is singing

even as it pours you a drink, the

cooking pots

have left their arrogant aloofness

and seen the good in you at last. All

the birds and creatures of the world are

unutterably themselves. Everything is

waiting for you.

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