Ten years ago, I was in anguish. My issues were entirely personal. I’m not the sort who likes to bare my soul in public so let’s just leave it there.
Suffice it to say that I felt my life was meaningless, a heap of ashes, and that it would have been better had I never been born.
So I wrote a book. In other words, I did something.
It doesn’t have to be a book. It could be fixing a car, climbing Denali, learning a language or calculus, painting the house. Personal anguish can only be extinguished by action because personal anguish is caused by inaction. I don’t believe that endless insight therapy does much. You’ll never do anything until you first do something.
Anyway, that’s what happened with me.
But how do you deal with impersonal forces beyond your control? These impersonal forces may have been carried out by people, but these people are acting out historical destiny or fate. And I can’t control them. Powerful people are directing things. I have zero influence or control over them. I might as well be trying to control an earthquake.
I see… things… and I am struck dumb, mute. I am galled. I am sickened. I can’t deal with it. I fritter away time on Twitter, which must be the most useless, distracting, garbage waste of time ever invented.1 And I waste more.
I am consumed. I walk the streets in two places: the place I’m in, and a place in my mind where I argue with everyone. I don’t argue with the other side, I’ve written them off. They’re unreachable.
Mostly I argue with my side. Those are the worst arguments.
I hope to clear my mind enough to write about these arguments here, not to convince anyone but only in the hope that I can reach some inner resolution, but right now I can’t.
For the first time in my life, I feel wounded and I hate saying so aloud because that’s showing weakness, but not saying so makes the feelings acidify and corrode my psyche.
“What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger” is bullshit. I am weakened and wounded, perhaps mortally. For the first time in my life I feel real fear. I guess it was high time, but still. It’s a horrible feeling.
So, what’s worse, personal anguish or impersonal anguish?
Impersonal. It’s not even close.