Projects

Everyone needs a project. Some people have big projects, like fighting for civil rights or getting to Mars. Others have much smaller ones, like maintaining an allotment or collecting a particular brand of kitchenware. Projects can be long-term, but they’re often short-lived.

Projects allow us to bring order to the chaos of life. To choose a project is to choose a purpose. Existential crises are brought on by a lack of projects. Or more specifically, the existential crisis is a complaint that no projects are worthwhile. To embark on any project is to decide that it matters. It’s easy enough to disregard small projects on that basis — surely the amount of Doctor Who memorabilia you collect doesn’t matter. It’s harder to dismiss big projects with the same ease. To say that fighting for civil rights doesn’t matter feels like saying the people being persecuted don’t matter. So perhaps the solution to an existential crisis is to find a big project.

Psychology suggests otherwise. Often the solution to an existential crisis is simpler: eating better, sleeping more, or exercising. These small fixes can be enough to help people regain interest in life. Some might argue that existential distress is just an intellectualising of negative emotion. Others might say that the distress itself provides insight into questions we’d usually avoid.

When I experience an existential crisis, certain themes tend to emerge. I’m struck by the fact that I won’t be alive very long — that life is temporary and fleeting. It’s a disorienting reality. Two common arguments tend to surface:

1. Life's finite nature makes it meaningful; therefore, you must seize every moment, pick every fruit, and hold your loved ones close.

2. Nothing we do will be of lasting consequence over any substantial time frame or in the context of an ever-expanding indifferent universe.

Both responses are problematic. Argument 1 simply ignores the question and advises carrying on as normal (albeit with renewed enthusiasm). Argument 2 places huge weight on a calculation which is self-defeating. If life has no intrinsic meaning, why try to measure it? The very act of measuring suggests that there’s meaning in the concept of measurement — which contradicts nihilism. In both cases, we end up in absurd territory.

I think a useful answer to the existential question starts with an acknowledgement of absurdity. How utterly bizarre to gain consciousness and discover that one is a glorified monkey able to conceive of itself and indeed its position in the universe BUT in all other aspects one is still a monkey. A mammalian life form destined for decomposition. It’s probably worth feeling some self-compassion for this predicament. I picture the rat in the maze, unable to understand why it has been put there. 

No wonder we have no idea what we’re doing. And no wonder it terrifies us so much that we’d rather distract ourselves than face it. Maybe if we began by acknowledging our shared predicament, something good could come of it. I can’t help but suspect that those who share quiet compassion for each other tend to pick the best projects — big or small.