I do think about life and death and purpose and art and suffering and god, but when I think about it, my mind retreats into the minutiae of everyday life. I think about budgeting on my Monzo, the best deals on pasta in Waitrose, and repotting the plants on the balcony at the weekend. I am soothed, I stand unbrainfully with my face tilted toward the sun, like one of those plants I really must repot at the weekend, trying not to think too far into my own future, or anyone else’s for that matter. Call me shallow, but life’s greatest questions do not instil wanderlust in me, nor the overwhelming urge to go bungee jumping. Rather, it leads me only further into the soft furnishings of myself.
I am curious of those for whom existentialism does bring the burgeoning desire for travel, adventure, and hedonism. I wonder whether perhaps there just isn’t enough fire in my belly, and I wonder where that fire has gone, for I am sure I had it once. I thought I was a little too young to lose it just yet. There are people who truly do find meaning at the ends of the earth. They see modern life’s trappings and they, rightly, run from it. They want to lose themselves in unmeaning; that’s how it appears to me, at least. They squirm at the bureaucracy and the congestion and the cruelty, and the patterns that we’ve etched into it all. They are not seduced by the idea of owning their own home, or really expensive cheeses in M&S, or getting excited when the next bank holiday rolls around. They baulk at it.
I see modern life’s trappings too, but I find something comforting in them, I have built them around me. When I went to visit these people, at the ends of the earth, all I could help but think is what they have left behind, and how much more real that all appears to me. I know it’s supposed to be the other way around. After all, it’s a system. I know it is. But I couldn’t help but wonder what the system would do to them when they got back, whether the system would be kind to them, as it is to me. I was indignant on behind’s behalf. Don’t they know the opportunities are all back there, back in the behind? What is their future? I could not see it, and I don’t know if they could see it either. They may not have even begun to think of it.
All I could think about is how far I am from the centre of things, out here, at the ends of the earth. I like to be in the centre of things. I like the motions, like the crowds, like the grind. The older I get, the more I see the sense in it. This comfort thing. It’s comfortable, that’s the thing. There’s order, and contentment, and the big things are suddenly the small things. I can cope here. I am not above it. Maybe some people are too proud to admit they’re not above it. Comfort, that is. You constantly hear tale of those for whom the ordinary was too little, too terrifying for them to contemplate. They need the extraordinary, they think to themselves. Where’s the extraordinary here, they say. And then they go to the ends of the earth.
And what do they find there? I’d love to know, but I’m not sure I’d believe it if they told me. Real happiness? That’s the goal, right? But I’ve always thought that happiness is too close to emptiness for me to want it. It drains the cup, that sort of thing. I’d rather have it half full. I do like to explore. I am a curious person, I have so much to give; at least, I like to think I have so much, but I assume everyone thinks that about themselves. I like to write; that’s my exploring. It seems wrong to reference writing whilst I’m in the action of doing it, but that’s what it comes down to. Why I write. I write to explore another side of myself, I write not to be constrained by the patterns we’ve etched into cruelty and bureaucracy.
Orwell said he wrote to expose some sort of lie. He wrote out of a feeling of partisanship, a sense of injustice. He had fire in his belly. I think it’s admirable but I would be lying if I said that was me. And Orwell isn’t around to criticise me; not that he would, I doubt I’d be on his radar. I write out of a sense of curiosity, of armchair exploration. And no, that’s not a euphemism. I have always been privileged, but I think there’s a level of privilege where you become too good, too prideful, too “special”, to be ordinary, to feel yourself to be ordinary, to want to be ordinary. It’s not that I want to be ordinary, but I don’t think it’s such a dirty word. I think it’s a touch snobbish to really baulk at this idea of ordinary. Who died and put you on the throne, you know? I can try and be extraordinary in my writing; that takes the pressure off having to be constantly aspiring toward extraordinary elsewhere. I have my brain, and life’s patterns can have the rest of me. Because it doesn’t really exist, does it? Being extraordinary, I mean. We’re all the same, and there’s something comforting in that.
You can go to the ends of the earth, and we’re still all the same. That’s life's last laugh. Even at the ends of the earth, there’s bureaucracy and cruelty and congestion. There are bus timetables and convenience stores and money changing hands. That’s what these people hate. That’s what I hate too. Well, you can’t escape it. Even at the ends of the earth. Maybe that’s why I retreat into the little things. Because I just feel that all of those big questions, all of the adventure, all of that hedonism, leads back to one thing. All roads lead to Rome. The same. The minutiae of everyday life. I’d rather be in the soft furnishings of myself, than at the ends of the earth, wondering why I’m still the same.