Of Existentialist Angst

I think existentialist angst is part of growing up. It is the second teenage that no one told us about. While in teenage, we could take solace in knowing that everyone else is also suffering. And there were a lot of other distraction - strong hormonal activity, career related anxiety and a thrill associated with the wonderful discoveries that you make during that time. Teenage triggered the first massive disillusionment wave. But we traded one set of illusions for another. It was just a transition from one comfort zone to another. Social support structure for a lot of people changed from family to friends.

One is slightly befuddled at the sudden discovery of existentialist doubts. An unexpected guest at an inopportune time! A forced realization of the recto absurdum of human life. A cheap freebie handed over by life. Something that cannot be put to use or be thrown away. Existentialism has been richly chronicled by philosophers and authors like Satre, Kierkegaard, Camus, Kafka and others. My personal favorite is Camus (Recommended reading: The Outsider, The Plague and The Myth of Sisyphus). Kafka is also good with The Trial and Metamorphosis. Regret the digression. This is the journey of your own. An overwhelming majority of our age is on this journey. The soul searching and the hunt for the meaning of life are there for everyone you know. Different people have different triggers. Loneliness, soured relationships, job-dissatisfaction and other random events account for most people. People manage it in different fashions. This ailment plagues everyone but there is no panacea for this. We should stop waiting for that ultimate high. It is not coming. Personally, I believe that a certain level of dissatisfaction is healthy. I think this is again a classic case of wrong expectation management. Our parents/influencers-main thought that if they make us do a certain set of things, we would have better lives than them. So they drove us in a particular direction. Meanwhile, our expectations from life soared! We thought that this is an engine that works at more than 100% efficiency. It does not. Its time that we accept this and move on! Probably life is just a mrig-trishna!

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Thought I would end-up there. Mrig-trishna is such a beautiful word to end such a note. Mirage sounds so inadequate as compared to it. But as usual, I have this urge to add qualifiers. This problem bothers the Atheists/Agnostics more than the believers. Believers have their doubts but take refuge in the belief that their god has planned all this for them. Some of them actually believe that this is a big conspiracy (plan) hatched to increase their proximity to god. As for the acute non-believers, Only God can help us ;)