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Utterly Pointless

Epiphanies from a mountain top

By Michael HalloranPublished 2 years ago 8 min read
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Utterly Pointless
Photo by Gary Ellis on Unsplash

It struck him that life was utterly pointless as he looked over the precipice.

The view before him, however, was magnificent. He let his gaze wander slowly over what was truly a panoramic scene, a deep and wide valley with rolling hills in the distance, a valley shot with shades of blues, greens, browns, and reds. The sunlight glinted off a snakelike river slithering its way along the knuckled bottom of the valley far below him.

He hadn’t come up here to ponder the pointlessness of human existence.

He also had no intention of doing anything stupid like jumping. He’d never fully understood the impulse to suicide, no matter how difficult life felt at any given moment. He privately felt that to take your own life was incredibly selfish. You only got one shot at life so there was surely some obligation to understand you were blessed to be here at all and therefore had to make something of it.

But maybe he hadn’t had to genuinely suffer like some people.

No. He had, ironically, made his way up here today to remind himself of how great life could be, how nature was truly far more remarkable than anything humanity could create. He even felt flooded with endorphins from the hours of rhythmic breathing as he negotiated the windy and steep mountain path.

This is why the realization right now that life was futile took him by surprise. It made him feel suddenly, overwhelmingly sad.

‘Hell’, he mumbled out loud, shocked at his unwanted insight.

By Elijah Hiett on Unsplash

There was no denying it. You were born, you grew, did some stuff which often was, at least initially, what you felt society expected you to do. If you were lucky and survived your youth, you eventually worked out that society’s expectations meant nothing. Society is just a construct. No one cares for more than a few moments at a time about your life anyway. Some of us work this out and are then smart enough to do what we think is meaningful or fulfilling, not what society expects. Many don’t do this, though, playing safe or being just too busy to actually pause and consider why they are doing whatever it is that they are doing.

Regardless, we all eventually die.

Rich and famous, or a peasant in a Chinese village – the same result.

Dead.

It sometimes happens quite suddenly; sometimes it is a slow process of many decades so that death, when it comes, is hardly noticeable.

‘Bloody hell’, he uttered, a little louder now.

He then looked sheepishly around to make sure he hadn’t been seen talking out loud to himself.

Why he cared, he didn’t know. Because if life is futile, why should he care if he is seen talking to himself?

Regardless, the coast was clear. This allowed his thoughts to return to the seriously disturbing flashes of insight which he’d was having.

We spend our lives pushing all this away, he thought. Knowing that you will die, really feeling it and understanding it as opposed to just being logically aware of the concept of death, is just too devastating. What would be the point of doing anything if the truth of futility was really understood? Why educate yourself to understand life better if you then die and that knowledge is wasted?

Why would one work for decades to build up financial security, for instance, when it is so illogical? Why buy those shares, or have that rental house to bring in extra income?

His dad used to pontificate, in a slightly self-satisfied manner, that ‘You can’t take it (‘it’ being money and other assets) with you when you die’.

Of course, it was easy for his dad to be philosophical about the uselessness of wealth because he had none. He was a farmer raising eleven children with his wife. His philosophy helped validate his own poverty, and no doubt helped him deal with the fact that some people had accumulated a lot more than he himself had in his lifetime.

‘F**k!’ he yelled.

As he stared and yelled into the void, he simultaneously drank in the almost spiritual spectacle before him.

The second epiphany since reaching the mountain top then hit him, quite hard, it must be said.

By Majestic Lukas on Unsplash

There is something wrong with my outlook, he thought.

Here I am, feeling great from walking up a mountain and having such unspoilt wilderness all around me - yet I’m building a case for the futility of human existence?

Really?

Surely the relationships and influences we have in our lives also means that our existence here, whether for 30 years or 90 years, is not for nothing.

He considers all those students that he taught over 35-plus years of teaching. He wasn’t at his best every single moment of every single day, but he tried hard most of the time, doing his best within the circumstances he was presented with. If there was a hypothetical scale of ‘crap teachers’ to ‘exceptional teachers’, he probably rated closer to the latter.

Feedback often isn’t forthcoming to teachers, but he would like to think that he did some good, setting many students up with skills and knowledge that they could go on with.

Hell, it strikes him now, as he shelves his modesty, that he may have even inspired some of them!

Quantifying in the absence of feedback that some students were inspired by him is difficult. There was that one guy a few years back, a prematurely balding former student in his late thirties, who hugged him after a random encounter late one night in a pub, hanging on just a bit too long for comfort while whispering huskily in his left ear ‘You changed my life, Mr. H’.

His girlfriend later pointed out that the former student may have liked him just a bit too much and not for educational reasons.

‘He was after your ass, Michael’, she teased.

He grins now. A bad example to choose, perhaps, for validating that his life has not been futile. But he is smiling now, ergo he is happy, right?

Is it possible, then, that his influence has been more significant than he is aware?

Because if life is futile, then his aunt’s life has been pointless also.

She turned 100 just a few months ago. He squirms now thinking of all those qualities she has – positive thinking, cheerfulness, hard work, honesty, being a good listener. She only recently gave up her driving licence, for instance.

The generations she has been a role model for could not possibly be for nothing.

‘Idiot’, he says out loud, and he is not referring to his aunt.

He says this because he knows that his aunt’s life could never have been in vain. And if her life has not been in vain, then it follows that others’ lives, maybe even his own, have not been pointless either. His mother’s, for instance, the diminutive woman who brought eleven children into the world and raised them.

The flaws some of his siblings possess cannot be blamed on his mother, after all.

She set them up. Their failings as adults are all their own.

This whole internal monologue, punctuated by his outbursts, is a reminder to him that the way we perceive things can really influence our happiness.

It is a reminder that the journey is not about futility but about being able to live in the moment.

He feels strong. He has a scene around him which is not only beautiful but unaltered by time. He is privileged to be here, to even be able to climb up here, to have blue sky and sunlight warming his skin. He won’t always be able to do this, so it is not life that is pointless, but more that his attitude needs tweaking.

Perhaps that anonymous letter he received decades ago was not far off the mark. The letter, complete with a letterhead from a well-known hospital told him that his ‘optrectomy’ was scheduled for a certain time on a certain date. The letter then went on to define an ‘optrectomy’ as an operation which severs the cord that links one’s eyes to one’s anus, thus eliminating one’s shitty view of life.

He now knows that a younger brother and his mate were behind the prank, but that is not the point. Had they guessed even back then that his attitude needed tweaking?

Nobody really knows what life is ‘all about’ because once you are dead, you are dead.

He knows, though, that he is still here, something some of his old friends never got the chance to experience. His prematurely dead siblings, two of them at last count. His schoolmate who fell off a roof in his twenties. The guy from his art class at school who was killed at 17.

The smell of bacon frying on a Sunday morning. Bread baking in an oven. Woodfired pizza, with simple toppings, Italian style. Finding a new series worth watching on Netflix or SBS On Demand. A well-made Flat White coffee in front of him around mid-morning.

By Markus Spiske on Unsplash

He sucks in some of the freshest air on the planet. He absorbs the beauty in front of him more carefully now. His state is not currently in lockdown because of COVID19, unlike much of the world, due to some luck and some good management.

He is a survivor, privileged to be doing this decades after others have died.

This is his time.

Life is not utterly pointless – it is utterly wonderful.

happiness
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About the Creator

Michael Halloran

Educator. Writer. Appleman.

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