The following article, I’m stuck in a miserable and futile existence, quotes someone who laments:
I see a therapist once a week. But I have a shameful and persistent feeling of despair. I’m stuck in a miserable and futile existence. I don’t like work. I hate being trapped within someone else’s schedule, sending pointless emails, attending pointless meetings. I hate the nine-to-five, the long commute, asking permission to take leave – it’s just sleep, work, sleep, work.
I have no garden, and noisy neighbours. I won’t starve or lose the roof over my head but I can neither afford to go away on holiday nor to dine out or buy clothes and books.
My family and friends are wonderful. I have a partner who loves me. But I am just desperately unhappy. How can I say any of this out loud to the people close to me? I feel like a petulant child: stuck, wailing. I don’t know how to be alive in this world and be happy.
The rise of modern capitalism and the introduction of the division of labour to maximise profits has resulted in most people living their lives as wage slaves, obliged to do work that is dull and repetitious. For many people, this is partially offset by the meeting up with people in the workplace, making friends, having a laugh with them. But for others who are not so gregarious, and maybe find it awkward to get on with others, going to work is often then just a daily grind that is unfulfilling and simply lacks any personal meaning. It is surely not how we are meant to live. Many of us are simply existing, not living.
It is true that we can get temporary distractions from the “toys” we can buy; the latest smartphone, or TV, or whatever. Or going on holiday. But even here, we are constantly comparing ourselves to others, feeling a failure as many others seem to be able to afford more than we can, or go on holiday more frequently. They can afford the latest and most expensive smartphone, and we can’t. But even when we do have enough money to buy all the latest gadgets’, this most often only temporarily ameliorates any feelings of emptiness, loneliness, and despair.
Nor, for many of us, is it helpful if we didn’t work at all. Many people find it profoundly boring not being in a full-time job as an employee. That they have nothing to do all day. Indeed, many people claim that when they were unemployed they were sleeping 12 hours a day and were just depressed.
I suggest that, ideally, we need to have a job, find work, which engages our interest. One needs to be intimately and emotionally involved in the product we're creating or the service we're providing. To produce something, or provide some service, that other people really appreciate together with the knowledge that not many others have the requisite skills to do likewise. It's working towards some goal, and for others to exclaim "wow" when they see what you've done. It's pride in producing something, or providing some service. And this in turn will encourage a sense of purpose and enjoyment in the work.
That’s the ideal, but in reality not the sort of work that most of us will ever obtain since modern industrial capitalist society creates precisely the type of work that is dull and repetitious. This is compounded by the fact that most of us work for 40 or more hours a week, hence leaving us less time for more purposeful activity. Incidentally, this is particularly vexing since it is my suspicion, and indeed some evidence suggests, that we could be just as productive, if not more so, if we worked fewer hours.
It seems to me that for a meaningful, fulfilling life, what we really need, what we really yearn, is a feeling of being alive. A feeling of life being an adventure. That life is a journey with ongoing meaningful experiences. But our modern industrial capitalist world forces us into meaningless soulless work and also conveys the message that we are just mere meat robots with no free-will destined to cease to exist when we die. All of which is antithetical to our yearning souls.
To be honest, I suspect we were all much happier in the Stone Age. Life won’t have been insipid, bland and boring back then. Yes, it might have been a hard life. A life full of many close brushes with death. But the comradeship and camaraderie when others save your life, and you theirs and the collective outpouring of emotions with the bitter and sweet taste of life in the raw, more than compensates. As would the implicit feeling that death is just another journey and all will come right in the end.
But I am not here to exclusively rail against all the failings of our modern world (I’ve done that elsewhere). To coin a phrase, it is what it is. The question is, for those who live bleak unfulfilling lives, what can we do about it?
If we cannot find work that is fulfilling, perhaps we can at least find work that has shorter hours, or where we interact with those with a similar mind-set to our own.
But I think the best course of action is to develop goals that we can strive towards. Develop an interest on some topic and read extensively about it. Or learn some new skill. It’s the striving towards a goal of some nature, even if it’s only a short term goal, which creates meaning and direction in our lives. But not unrealistic goals, rather something that you feel you can genuinely attain with some dedication and effort.