A couple months ago I turned 56, and all the thoughts in my head that had building for a few years completely exploded in my head, diving me into some deep existential angst. Things that I’d never worried about were now front and center, and I’m not liking this at all.

So many whys.

From the vast, such as why are we here? What is the point of our existence? Why do we push and struggle so hard when the vast majority of us won’t leave any mark at all? Why do we do anything if it doesn’t mean anything? And if it doesn’t mean anything, does that mean that it should mean something to us to give this life meaning??

To things such as, why have we gone from mostly supportive blogging communities to instant social media sites that are making so many of us miserable and stressed? Why is fast so important? Why isn’t deeper communication meaningful anymore? Why is everyone staring at their phones all the time, even when walking down the street? Why is being constantly connected online so important now?

To the menial things that now drive me nuts daily. WHY are there so many trinkets in my house that I keep even though I barely look at them?? Why is there so much clutter?? Why do I save things on my computer when I am so much an ‘out of sight, out of mind’ person?

It all comes down to one question:

What is the point of it all???

Rilke famously wrote, “Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”

I’m trying, but it feels like the wheel is spinning faster and faster, and the questions get bigger and deeper…as well as more inane at times. And i don’t feel any closer to the answers, do you?

Pip

©Pip Miller – May 2019