The Point is Navajo Point

I remember when I was five years old, how I would lie on the bottom bunk trying to figure out if I was awake or dreaming. . . .and if I was dreaming, I wondered how far through the night it was (and how I could know). Had I just fallen asleep? Was it midnight? Was I just about to wake up? At five, I didn't understand that I was asking a fundamental existential question that plagues even the best of philosophical minds. . . . .I just wanted to know if I was awake or dreaming. And although I never really found a meaningful answer to this question, this fact never stopped me from asking.

Half a century later, I am still asking questions about the nature of my existence. . . .with no better answers, unfortunately, than found by my five year old mind. . . .

I'm not depressed. . . .and I'm not suicidal. . . .but I just don't understand what the point is to my life. If I were to disappear in this instant, there would be no significant change to the ebb and flow of the world. . . .none. Someone else would be hired for my position at the switchboard, people who knew me might feel a moment of sadness at the thought of me being gone, but my place in the world offers no significant daily contribution. The only part of my world that would be significantly impacted by my passing would be my cat, as she would need a new home.

As I said, I'm not depressed, and I'm not suicidal, I'm just questioning my place in the world and searching for that thread of purpose that gives me reason to get up each day, something more than just another day's struggle with anxiety, panic, and chronic sleep deprivation. I don't have children to raise. I don't have grandchildren to enjoy. I don't even have a spouse to love and cherish, so where is the purpose and meaning to a life if there are no contingencies to connect with?

Is it enough that we are created?

Thinking fondly of the cow I met down in Prescott last fall, the blissful cow eating grass as the sun set, oblivious to anything going on in the world. The cow doesn't think about its place in the world. The cow doesn't search for meaning and purpose. Is that kind of peace and serenity even possible on the other side of an existential crisis nearly half a century old? And, if not, then what's the point? Is happiness the point? Is life satisfaction the point? Is survival from Point A to Point B the point?

I don't know, maybe I am just depressed. . . .but being depressed (even if that is the case) doesn't change the essential need for the question to be answered, because I don't like the fact that any inherent meaning to the course of events in my life boils down to what I do to make a living in this God forsaken world I find myself living in.