e=mc2

Every single day, I wake up and wonder if it's worth it. Not in a suicidal kind of way, although I often think about that angle as well, but probably not in the way you think. I'm not lying in bed, contemplating ending it all, I'm just looking at the day ahead and life in general, and wondering what's the whole point of it all.
Mostly, I realize that there is no point, not in the grand scheme of things. I even laugh about the whole "grand scheme" terminology, because there really doesn't seem to be one, and if there is, none of us can see it. We might fool ourselves that we do, or pretend to understand whatever deity we decide to worship, or that we comprehend the inner workings of the universe, but that's poppycock. We don't have the first clue.
We just try to do what's right, to live the best lives we can, and then fail spectacularly at it everyday. Because really, what fun is playing it safe and being responsible?
Which is ironic, because a lot of my morning ritual is spent plotting a course for the day that I will not follow, at least not for long. Sure, I'll get a couple of the things done that I need to do, but as the day goes on, I'll convince myself that a lot of the tired old day to day stuff can wait until tomorrow. Then, rinse; repeat.
I will think about the things I did yesterday, and wonder why I didn’t do some things differently. There are so many simple and easy things that I put off that I should do, and I wonder why that is. In hindsight, it seems like it would have been so easy to do whatever it was that I talked myself out of doing. For some reason, when it is time to do a lot of the mundane upkeep life requires, it just seems so hard. I will distract myself any way I can. I will sometimes just sit and stare into the distance, and avoid doing the simplest and easiest chores that are right in front of me.
I sometimes wonder if it’s depression that keeps me from doing even the simplest things. I don’t think so, at least not in any chemical sense. I think it’s probably a byproduct of my whole thinking too much and making lists in my head of what’s really important and what’s just pointless stuff that doesn’t really matter at all. If you pull back far enough, nothing really matters at all. In that nonexistent grand scheme of things, nothing anyone does matters at all, so why do I care about housework? I live alone, so who cares if I vacuum? Who’s going to see it? What does it matter if I leave the dirty dishes in the sink until tomorrow? No one sees my kitchen but me.
The thing is, it does kind of matter. In fact, my unvacuumed rug and my sink full of dishes makes me feel worse about myself. Now, in my bed in the morning, taking stock of my life, it seems like failure. It radiates out from there. I don’t want anyone to see my dirty floor or messy kitchen, so it’s kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy sort of thing. I feel like I spend too much time alone, but I don’t want anyone seeing my messy apartment, so …
That’s how easily patterns form, and how quickly we lock ourselves into cycles that are bad for us. I can quickly extrapolate not vacuuming my rug into thinking that it’s pointless to do anything with anybody. Ultimately, it will all end badly, and somehow my carpet is to blame.
So I lay in my bed in the morning, and I participate in another one of those cycles. I resolve not to do all that anymore, then I go out and do exactly that. It is hard to break routine, which is why we need to be careful about the routines we set for ourselves. That’s why you should do different things all the time. That’s why you should have new experiences and live outside your comfort zone.
So I lay there and decide against doing any of that. After all, if nothing matters anyway … well, you get the idea.
That’s where the whole wondering if it’s worth it thing comes in. Everyday, I make a list and draw diagrams in my head. Although there is no actual paper, but I am looking at everything spelled out on paper, and doing complex equations in my head to try to get the sides to balance. There are plenty of days when I can’t, when on paper there seems to be no point in going on. I look at it in an academic sort of way. Suicide isn’t an option, but on the days when I can’t balance the spreadsheet, I just sigh to myself, and think about how it’s going to be a melancholy day. Sometimes it’s going to be a day I just have to power myself through.
I often think about my friends, and the things that they are dealing with. I marvel at how they handle things. I think about the people I know who have it worse than me, and I figure if they can do it, so can I. I think about how I’ve made it this far, 54 years on the planet, and how so many of my days started out just like this, but I made it back to my bed at night in one piece.
It’s usually at this point in the morning when I write one of my horoscopes. I write them to share my own inner dialogue, and I hope they help other people get through their own hard times. I hope people can relate to them, and see that they aren’t alone. Sometimes, they inspire what I write, because I am awed by them, or moved by what they are going through. Mostly, though, they are the result of all my calculations I am working through in the first moments of the day, while I lie there and wonder if all this is worth it. In the end, they are basically a way to talk myself into getting out of bed and facing the day. They are surprisingly effective.
What I usually realize is that life isn’t meant to be lived on paper. It can’t just be summed up by some convoluted math. Most of what makes life … well, life … is the intangibles, and I don’t think any of us are good enough at math to compute those into the equation. Most of the things that make life worth living are things we never saw coming. There are emotions we could never plan because we didn’t know we were capable of feeling them until they came along. There is so much random chance and unexpected epiphanies. There are so many things still left to be discovered, and so many reactions we didn’t know we would have.
How could we possibly factor in the things we didn’t even know existed in the first place?
Life is meant to be lived, in the moment, not played out incorrectly in your head. That’s where I get myself in trouble the most. I am constantly thinking about the past or plotting a course through a nonexistent future, and getting most of it wrong. It’s like the most poorly played game of chess in the world, where I don’t know all the rules, and can only see half the board to begin with.
I will try to map out where everything is going to end up, and my compass is telling me that most of it really doesn’t matter anyway, and spins erratically. That’s a bad navigational instrument. It won’t tell you where true north lies, and will send you in circles and deposit you in the same place.
Somehow, I need to reconcile the fact that while I know nothing matters in some weird cosmic scale, a lot of things actually do matter. My list should be more along those lines, figuring out what to leave in the “what’s important” column, rather than figuring out the elaborate mathematics that I need to move them to the “what doesn’t really matter because life is an absurdist cosmic joke” column.
There has to be a better balance to life than simply living my life from my bed in twenty minutes at the beginning of the day, then sleepwalking through it for the remainder. That’s what really matters.