Why All of Your Silver Lining Bullshit is Missing the Point

One of my biggest, most rampant, most badly behaved interests is existence: my existence, your existence, our existence, what that existence means, how to do it well, and what we get out of it.

When I talk about “existence,” I do not mean anything complicated. I just mean, the fact that I’m here, that you’re here, that we’re all here.Some philosophers try to make existence very #complicated, but I think it’s all very #simple.

However, to me, that does not make it any less baffling.

Let me put this in context. Let’s assume that there is some indeterminacy in the universe; things aren’t set to happen one way or another, and there’s a potential universe out there that’s different from this one. This is not that hard to believe if we believe in free choice; at least, there’s a possible earth where we did not appear. In fact, I would venture to say that human life is so unlikely that there are billions and billions of possible earths or universes where we did not make the guest list.

This does not mean that we are VIPs. It means we got very very very very VERY lucky. We don’t need to be here on this planet. There is no universal decree, and we are not the answer to some cosmic equation. We are more of a byproduct of this biosphere’s resources and semi-random processes. I don’t like saying we are an “accident,” because to me that means “mistake.” I prefer to think of us as one of many possible outcomes on a billion-billion-sided die, tossed by an unknown force onto an expansive cosmic table.

Read more about Davidism here.

With that in mind, I find myself puzzled at some things people say. One thing that I hear from countless people my age and older is this: “Try to find the good in the bad. Look for the silver lining in the clouds. Every misfortune is a blessing in disguise. Count your blessings.” People say this because life comes with a large share of pain, and we look for ways to cope with that pain. I don’t think I have met anyone who is not trying to cope with some kind of physical or emotional pain.

But after thinking about how random and unlikely our existence is in the first place, I am starting to think that all this silver lining stuff is complete bullshit.

I mean, it’s a nice thought, but it’s just missing the point.

We’re here, dammit.
WE EXIST.

And to me, the fact of our existence is so massively important that it outweighs anything anyone could say about it. No matter what our existence contains — whether it is pleasant or unpleasant — the unavoidable fact is that we exist.

If this is not astounding yet, it will be soon. Try to think of what it would be like not to exist. I do not necessarily mean to be “dead,” but rather just to cease being. Think of all your senses disappearing, all your memories vanishing, and all your thoughts dissolving. It’s hard — if not impossible — to imagine. However, it is as possible as any other number on the billion-billion-sided die.

Ironically, people have been wondering about non-existence for thousands of years. One example that sticks out to me is a fictional character, Hamlet, from Shakespeare’s play. When Hamlet’s father’s ghost revealed to him that he was murdered by his brother, Hamlet is so distraught that he considers killing himself. He tries to imagine what it would be like not to exist. And he, like everyone else who ever tried, failed.

To be, or not to be? That is the question — 
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And, by opposing, end them?

What Hamlet didn’t realize was that this was a really dumb question to ask. It’s like asking yourself at breakfast whether you would prefer Pop Tarts or some food item that doesn’t exist. Which is better? Nobody knows, and nobody ever will, because it’s a dumb question. You have to eat. In the same way, there is no question about whether existence is better than non-existence. Existence is the only option.

Although Hamlet’s question was irreparably stupid, Hamlet was not stupid. He was a pretty regular guy. But like so many people, he was asking the wrong question. And he was asking the wrong questions because he did not realize that we are one possible outcome on a billion-billion-sided die. In other words, he could not understand that existence is a privilege.

In the end, Hamlet did the smart thing. He didn’t kill himself. He chose life. However, he did that for the wrong reasons. At the end of his famous soliloquy, he says, “There’s the respect | That makes calamity of so long life,” which essentially means, “We can’t figure out whether it’s better to live or die, so we live long miserable lives in the hopes that something will get better eventually.”

Personally, I think that’s dismal.

If Hamlet understood that the whole of human existence was a chance result on the billion-billion-sided die, and that he didn’t have to be born, and that there was no intelligible alternative to life, he would have said this:

TO BE. TO BE. THAT IS THE ONLY OPTION. | ’TIS WONDERFUL TO LIVE, TO SUFFER | ALL OF FATE’S GREAT JOYS AND WOES | WHAT ELSE IS THERE TO KNOW BUT LIFE? | MY BODY CAPTIVE TO SENSATION | THE HEARTACHE AND THE THOUSAND SHOCKS | THAT FLESH IS HEIR TO — ’TIS A PRIVILEGE | I WOULD NEVER CAST AWAY. TO DIE, TO END. | TO END, NEVER TO BEGIN AGAIN. FOR AFTER DEATH | NO JOY, NO PAIN, TO HUMAN FEELINGS RING AGAIN | AND ALL I LOVED IN LIFE NO LONGER IS.

When a person does not take life for granted, he or she become a lover of fate. The “love of fate,” to which people sometimes refer in Latin as amor fati, is central to the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, a man famous for affirming life. He gazed into the abyss of existence, saw no meaning, and then danced.

Related: Everything happened right...

To love fate is much bigger than finding the silver lining in one’s circumstances. Loving fate means accepting both your sufferings and your joys as equally integral parts of the strange and rare experience of being human — and to choose to love it all. After all, this is all you get. You don’t get a second life. Who knows? You might not even get an afterlife. Everything that life can be is right here, right now.

This applies to everyday life. For example, if you just accidentally cut your finger while you were slicing strawberries, that is really fucking cool, because you have a body, and you have blood, and you’re in pain, and that’s what it means to be alive.

If you just got laid off from your job, hell fuckin’ yeah. The disappointment you feel in yourself and your frustration at the system and all your anxiety about what you’re going to do to feed your kids…that’s part of what it means to be human. This is the beginning of a new chapter in life. Celebrate that.

If you just broke up with your SO, and you’ve cried yourself to sleep every night for the past week, and you can’t imagine how you’re going to go on, it’s time to realize that you are having one of the most intense human experiences of your entire life. It’s called heartbreak, and it is going to change you forever. Don’t be afraid. Just keep breathing and feeling it.

If you’re stressed because of your job, and you’re pulling your hair out about your deadlines, rock on. Nothing amazing happens in this world unless somebody is pulling her hair out about deadlines. Be thankful that you exist, and you get to know what that side of life is like.

Living a human life is not about being at peace and relaxed and happy all the time. It’s about everything: and that includes the most terrible terrible. Your body is designed to feel pain, to be stressed, to be challenged, to endure. In fact, if you are not suffering, I believe you are at a disadvantage. If you are not suffering, you are missing much of what existence has to offer.

This Holiday season, do not go the way of those I like to call the “grateful dead” — the masses who claim to be thankful for the little things but completely miss the big picture. Do not go the way of the yogis and seek inner peace at the expense of your passion. Be thankful for your pain, for the ways life has stretched you and punched you and ripped you to shreds. If it were not for all the pain you went through, your existence would be a fraud, you would be living an empty version of human life.

Be thankful that you can feel, that you have breath, that you can think.

Be thankful that there is anything at all.

Learn more about the strangeness of existence.

Updates, Feelings, Dialogues

I feel like I haven't posted in a while. I happen to be awake tonight, and there's no way in hell that I'm going to be productive, so I'm going to share some feelings with you in the form of a dialogue.

It's like Plato, but for therapeutic purposes.

Maybe Plato is therapeutic for some people. I don't know.

What have I been feeling lately?

1. Frustrated

Therapist: Why have you been feeling frustrated?

Me: Well, I watched a movie.

Yes?

It was a documentary called The Punk Singer. I really liked it. The lead singer of Bikini Kill is a really inspiring person. Halfway through the movie I stopped it and decided to have a dance party in my parents' living room. They were away for the weekend. I plugged my computer into the TV and put on a YouTube strobe light and turned out all the lights.

Sounds like fun.

It was really fun. I felt really alive when I was dancing. I decided that I would just be myself and jump and scream and let all my energy out. It was cathartic.

Cathartic meaning?

There was something inside me that just needed to be let out. And I let it out when I was dancing. I haven't been dancing in a while lately.

Does this have anything to do with you feeling frustrated?

Kind of. After watching Kathleen Hanna scream her guts out at punk rock concerts, I felt like I wasn't doing enough to let out my true self. You know, like how I felt when I was dancing. The feeling of being let loose, free, limitless...I wished every moment could be like that...and I was frustrated that I was a barista and an editor and not the frontman of a punk rock band. I see Kathleen Hanna on the stage and I think, that's who I want to be like...that's me...but at the same time it's not. And that's frustrating.

Are you unhappy with your job?

No, I really like my work, most of the time. I just feel like I'm in a box. Like it's not the real me...it's just something I'm doing for a while so that people give me money so that I can save up to travel...and me traveling is the real me. At least, that's one of my goals. 

Does traveling have anything to do with your frustration?

It does. It didn't take me long to forget why I was looking for work in August. I wanted to travel, and I thought I needed money to do that, which is true, so I looked for work. I found work, and I told myself at the beginning that this was a good thing and that I needed to "earn my freedom," like the author of Vagabonding says, and I was incredibly motivated at that point to just buckle down and work like a dog for four months. And that's what I've been doing. 

So why are you frustrated?

I'm frustrated because there are so many obstacles to me feeling like I'm actually doing what I want to do. I want to travel, but I have to work first. I want to dance, but I also have to eat, which means I have to work. 

Do you think that other people have these obstacles, too?

Yes, I do. I feel like the whole system is rigged to keep people from being themselves. Because if everyone just did what they wanted to do, certain people would lose power. Capitalism's strength is its ability to convince people that they are acting in their own interest when in fact they are acting in the interest of someone else. And we're all stuck in this system, so much that anyone who says things like this about the system is just suffocated by the majority of people who accept the system.

That sounds like a pretty lousy world to live in.

It is pretty lousy. But as I'm explaining this I'm starting to think that it's very natural for me to blame something for the pain I'm feeling. Today it's capitalism. Tomorrow it might be my parents. Things are bad, and I can't explain it. Something is just off. 

So, back to traveling. You said you feel like traveling is the real you. And you're feeling frustrated because you have to jump through some hoops in order to be the real you. What are those hoops that you have to jump through?

Well, I have to finish my pottery class. That's one thing tying me down. I'm working at the coffee shop, but it's part-time work, and it's not really something I'm married to. I have my work for [], but I can do that from anywhere, and I can just tell [] that I can't come into the office for a few months because I'll be doing my work from a cabin in the woods. Maybe I'll just go up to Vermont and work at []'s cabin. That would be cool.

It sounds like it's just the pottery class.

Yeah, I guess that's the only thing that's keeping me from traveling. And the fact that I don't know how to couchsurf and I'm afraid of doing it wrong and either offending my hosts or getting kidnapped by ISIS.

Let's talk about that first one. You're afraid of doing it wrong. Tell me more about that.

Well, I'm afraid of not being welcome. That happened to me a month or so ago. I couchsurfed in New Hampshire, and after a few days I was kicked out because my being there was messing up my host's routine. It was hard for me, but I guess it wasn't that bad. I didn't get kidnapped or beaten up or anything.

Sounds like you've seen a pretty negative scenario already. Do you think this will happen with every host?

Probably not. I just need to make my couchsurfing profile and start contacting people. That's the hard thing for me. Actually talking to people and making plans and saying, yes, I'll be here on this date, no doubt about it.

Surely that's unavoidable with couchsurfing.

Yeah, it's part of the deal.

Are there other ways to travel that appeal to you?

Well, everything else is so expensive. I just want to sleep somewhere. It could be a park bench or the back of a van. I don't have the charisma to just walk up to people and by the end of the conversation have convinced them that I'm worth putting up for the night. So, I feel like this whole traveling thing is going to be very dirty and smelly and hairy and grimy and some nights I probably won't sleep, but hey, that's how it is now, and things might not work out all the time. But that's OK. It's OK when things don't work out. I think I'm just averse to the thought that things might not work out. 

Say that again. I didn't quite understand.

I'm much better at handling unforeseen circumstances than handling the idea of unforeseen circumstances. Like, when I'm actually in a situation, and things aren't going as planned, I'm pretty OK with it. But when I'm making plans, I'm very sensitive to the thought that things might not work out, or something might go wrong, or I'm unqualified or unprepared, and those thoughts make me change my course to something more like what I've always been doing. So, I end up not taking risks, not doing new things, and not changing.

So, you feel that the possibility of failure has a large impact on your planning?

Yes. I picture things going very badly in my head, and then I feel how I would feel in those situations, and then that feeling carries over into my reality, and it's almost as if something already did go very badly, and I lose confidence, and I don't do what I originally wanted to do.

And this keeps you from, say, couchsurfing?

I think so. It doesn't make any sense, but I think that's how it's working.

I think we're making progress. You've recognized that there's a pattern in your thinking that doesn't make sense, and it's affecting your behavior in ways you don't like. My specialty is in cognitive behavioral therapy, so I can help you work on your thoughts and your behaviors in tandem. Let's start with the behavior you want to change. Can you identify that behavior?

I think it's not doing new things because I'm afraid they're not going to work out.

OK. So let's take some steps backwards and figure out how you get to that outcome. You said that when you start thinking of something you want to do, you quickly lose confidence in the idea, thinking of a situation in which it doesn't work out.

Right.

The first step to countering the thought pattern is by disrupting it. When we go on autopilot, we lose control. Really, we give up control. The first step is taking yourself off autopilot. This means you have to pay attention to what you're thinking in those times of decision making, when you're contemplating a new plan. So, the real first step is recognizing when you're entering one of those decision making moments, and then raising a little flag in your mind that says, "TIME TO WATCH YOUR THOUGHTS." How do you think you could do that?

Well, I could write myself a note.

You could do that.

I could set reminders on my phone that ask me, every five hours, "Are you getting near one of those situations?" And I could either start thinking about it or just ignore the notification.

These are some great ideas, David. So, once you break yourself out of autopilot, you can start to walk yourself through some new mental steps instead of going through the same old same old mental steps that send you down the bad mental path. Let's say you find yourself thinking about something new that you'd like to try, and you raise the flag and realize you're in the zone. What next? Talk to yourself about what you would usually do in this situation. What you usually do is say, OK, it's a cool idea, but it's just not for me, I'm not ready, it could go wrong, yadda yadda yadda, and then you don't do anything new. Once you have brought to mind the old way of doing things, you can say, OK, I usually do that, but now I'm going to do something a little different, as an experiment, and I'm open to it being a raging success or a mistake. Does that make sense?

Yeah, it does.

You're smiling.

Yeah, it just makes a lot of sense. I feel like I'm starting to get a grasp on what's going on in my head.

It just takes some talking. So, with this couchsurfing thing, what are you going to do when you find yourself thinking about it?

OK. I'm going to realize that I'm thinking about it, take myself off autopilot, imagine what I would usually do in that situation, and then do something slightly different, as an experiment. And I'm going to say, I'm open to this being a big success, or a mistake.

Yup, you nailed it. OK, so we talked about a lot of things today. And we should keep talking about them next week. Why don't you come in again next week and let me know how things are going?

OK. Same time, same place?

Yes, this is my office.

How much do your sessions cost, again?

These are free. I don't exist. 

Right. Well, you helped a lot.

God helps those who help themselves.

what would i say if today were my last day?

One of the things that fuels my thinking is a constant meditation on the immanent possibility of death. As a rule, there is no guarantee, no unbreakable, invincible reassurance that I will have the privilege of enjoying another day of living as David DeLuca the human being. Walking outside my home, I might be hit by a car or be crushed by a falling tree. Even staying at home in my bed, there is always the possibility of suffering a random heart attack or dying by some unprecedented freak event.

Death is at the same time predictable and unpredictable.

It's predictable in the sense that everyone knows that it will happen. It is unpredictable in that nobody knows how. This is the paradox of death. This is why the thought of death is both an immobilizing and a motivating force for all life forms. In the face of death we either flee or freeze as adrenaline rushes through our galvanized arteries. We cannot decide how to react because death is absolute in its ambiguity. It will happen, and it will not happen.

For this reason, I have trouble deciding how to answer the question I posed in the title: "What would I say [in this post] if today were my last day?" On the one hand, I am certain that I will die. Knowing this serves as a motivation to get all my thoughts out before the end, to preserve my most current philosophical thought in a form that will survive me. But on the other hand, if I take seriously the immanence of termination, I betray my desire to instill meaning in my final days even by writing this post. Why? Because it would be pathetic and meaningless to die in the midst of broadcasting my thoughts over the Internet and thinking that they would really represent my thinking in a genuine form. The question itself, "What would I say if today were my last day?" must transform itself in the face of death into something completely different:

Why would I say anything if today were my last day?

That is, why would I waste what little time I had left writing a blog post? It would be a terrible waste, wouldn't it? In theory, I could be reading my favorite book, or calling my loved ones, or making another cup of coffee and putting in extra cream and sugar—doing anything, really, that would actually give me a sense of heightened meaning and closure on my final day, anything act that would stand as a symbolic gesture of, "OK, now I'm ready to go. I've tied together all my loose ends." But instead, I choose to whack away at a keyboard and write out some thoughts that I'm sure nobody will actually read. By saying anything at all, I forget that meaning comes not from words typed on a screen, but from actions.

But here, the ambiguity of death—its simultaneous distance and immanence—gives me some room to say a few things despite the possibility of a meaningless death without closure.

First, if I were to die today, I would say that I was never really sure whether I followed my dreams. I think I'm not alone in this because the strength and subtlety of the ideologies of our culture prevent me at times from understanding what I really want in the first place. What are my dreams, and how do I distinguish them from what society tells me my dreams should be?

I am not sure whether I followed my dreams.

What do I think my dreams are? I dream of being a husband of a beautiful woman and a father of beautiful children. I dream of being a stay-at-home father who teaches his children to love themselves, to see themselves as good and noble people, and to be free from the guilt and shame that I experienced in my adolescence as a follower of Christianity. I dream of starting a society where people pledge loyalty to one another in the face of uncertain futures, where people embrace simplicity in material things and complexity in ideas, and where those values I mentioned before, in addition to honesty, freedom, and courage, would form a palpable backbone for our lives.

I dream of giving people real freedom.

I can't say I know I have done this for anyone. But I know that I have (mostly) freed myself to some degree. That, and others have opened windows for me through which I was able to free myself. But the point is that, because I am pretty sure that I have not done this for others, I feel that my dream is only realized in part, and that, provided I had a bit more time to live, I would really want to make this my mission. Freedom is, in my view, what really matters.

The second thing I would say, if I were to die today, is a piece of advice for all the living:

Remind yourself daily never to be afraid.

Fear is an instrument of self-preservation. All forms of fear are forms of self-preservation. If you are afraid, it is because your body wants to keep on living. It is because your ego wants to maximize its chances of surviving either in your body or in that of another with whom it identifies (thus love, compassion, etc.). But self-preservation in itself is an end that the body seeks but does not understand. The body (mind included) operates within a fixed realm of self-serving beliefs: the belief that life is good, that the body should exist, and that death is bad and scary. It "believes" these things biologically, as if programmed to do so in the womb, and it cannot be convinced otherwise for very long. Forgetting to fear death can only be a temporary bodily condition, like an illness. It must end in either the death of the body itself or recovery from the "illness." Maybe I'm cynical, but it seems that every time someone has a revelation that death is nothing to be feared, they either (a) die or (b) get over it. Their bodies cannot be permanently convinced of the proposition because the nature of the body is to contradict that very proposition by living.

There is much to be experienced by way of not fearing death, but our bodies betray themselves and limit themselves by being themselves and serving themselves.

Another thing:

Happiness need not be complicated.

When I was walking around my neighborhood with my parents earlier this week, I realized that I was happy for the first time in a while. Why? Because I was on top of my work, loved, well-fed, clothed and comfortable. My father told me that "This is real life," as in, this state of happiness is the way things really are, and you should never forget that. "This is real life" in that this should be my default state.

And that's something that has taken me a long time to learn. I was extremely troubled as an adolescent. I alternated between believing I was worthless if I did not drop everything and become a radical, voluntarily poor Christian and believing that I was a terrible sinner stuck in a vortex of self-destructive habits. Occasionally I found myself enraptured in the arms of another adolescent, but the God figure in my head always loomed between me and the genuine enjoyment of my relationships and clouded my view. Long story short, I developed a very complicated view of happiness that most of the time prevented me from being happy at all. At some level, I needed to go through that in order to become who I am today, but on another level, it was awful and I wish it didn't have to happen.

My advice, therefore, is not to overcomplicate your happiness. Just let yourself be satisfied.

Which brings me to my last point. (Last because the weather is too gorgeous outside for me to waste my "final day" typing away.) My last point is this:

I am so glad that my life happened the way it did.

Shortly before he went insane, Friedrich Nietzsche wrote in his work Ecce Homo, "At this very moment I still look upon my future—an ample future!—as upon calm seas: there is no ripple of desire. I do not want in the least that anything should become different than it is; I myself do not want to become different" (EH, II.ix).

There are times in my life when I look back on everything that has happened to me, on all the things I've done—people I've loved, hearts I've broken, classes I've taken, books I've read, places I've gone, etc.—and I just stand in awe of the whole thing. I'm in awe of two things: one, the fact that I am alive; and two, the fact that there is life. To think of the alternative—that there be no me, and no life—is so mind-boggling that I am forced to cling to what is with the desperate grip of a newborn monkey on its mother's back. I cannot fathom there not being anything. The sheer impossibility of nothingness is what compels me to (dare I say) worship existence, to throw myself down before life itself and say, "Yes. You are my dream. You are my calling. You are my every desire."

I think I've said enough now. Despite my initial thought that I might regret spending my "last moments" writing a blog post, I wouldn't have had it any other way. I learned more writing this than I did all week just living my life.