08/01/19

I sit back and feel my lunch inside me. It’s the first thing I’ve eaten today and transfigures the erratic caffeine fueled mood of the morning into a feeling of direction. I’m suddenly reading with zest and digesting the pages at a meta-level. I’m reading Nausea and I think I’ve found the meaning of life, but it’s not a phrase nor an imperative. It’s not to achieve world peace nor my mission. It’s a feeling. And it’s not because of what I’m reading, per se, more about what I feel towards the author and what the implications of that are. Sartre is a clear and obvious gamma: I see it in his Marxist rage and how he calls men of history ‘bastards’; I see it in his sometimes waffling, unclear prose (though some of that may be because of translation); I see it in how his character pines after the same girl for six years with no reply; I feel it in his French haughtiness. I’ve always got the impression that the French consider themselves superior: secret kings. My suspicions were aroused when I found out that his father had died when he was two, a situation which I’m sure exacerbated his narcissism. They were furthered when I found out how he re-framed himself as an anarchist when he was criticised. Now Jean must know that as a man you have to take responsibility for what goes on in your life and I think he shows that he knows this when he says that someone is the sum of their experiences (their being?). But instead he can’t see beyond his present perception, outside of his being is nothingness. He knows he’s meant to achieve something but can’t bring himself to do it and so he feels his nausea and alienation. He sees himself as a failure. That he was born into a skin in which he couldn’t fulfil its duty. It’s him that makes me feel nauseous. Then I’m reminded of something that I think Camus said: when the world stems from our perception, we become God. I’m God then. I sit back further and look out the window into a chalked sky and imagine the world flowing out from me towards the corners of infinity. Down into the foyer, out the doors, down the street and onward and I know, I just know, that the things outside of my perception exist. Though I can’t prove it with pen and paper I feel certainty. Is it a leap of faith? Mentally yes. But the feeling exists in my body as a chemical, somewhere, just as the blood in my veins exists too. She recommended this book to me and She’s always said my feeling of certainty is a ‘Why.’ I’d poke her sometimes with the tip of my finger and smile and ask ‘Why?’ ‘For someone who has anxiety…” She would begin. These thoughts combine to form a realisation that the meaning of life is a feeling. It’s not a phrase nor an imperative. It’s not to achieve world peace nor my mission. It’s the feeling of being comfortable with the responsibility of creating direction. I put on the crown and its weight feels right. I check the time and I realise I should head back to work so I gather up my rubbish and wonder: was this more of gravy than the grave?

Yours unfaithfully,

Thomas Crown