A Pilgrim’s Digression

I cannot remember a time in my life where I felt more apathetic about the things that used to interest me. I remember at one time being the kind of person who was interested in writing and thinking about politics and current events. Indeed my blog began as a direct response to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and for several years afterwards it was mainly a political-themed blog.

Some of my earliest, fondest memories of intellectual awakening are of my senior year of high school, 1991, when a friend and I would argue the pros and cons of the Persian Gulf War (he was pro, I was con) in the few minutes before the bell rang and our Physics class began.

I do not see myself arguing with anybody, about anything, these days. I simply don’t feel passionate enough. The war, the election, politics, the culture…I just don’t care. I still read the news as a way of passing the time, and I have opinions about things, of course. But I feel no desire to impress those opinions upon anyone. God knows in our world there are enough people eager to impress us with their opinions. Everyone has opinions they believe to be the gospel truth.

In part, my apathy is pure cynicism. If you asked me which of the candidates for President I like, I’d say none of them. Not a single one. There are a couple I would vote for, probably for wholly irrational and not entirely coherent reasons, but like them? They are all a bunch of phonies, as far as I am concerned. I don’t believe a one of them has the honesty and integrity of a five year old child. The system is rigged anyway so that the nominees are foreordained, and in the end, despite all their talk of “change” nothing much really changes except for the worse.

Thus, I just don’t care. Cynical, oh yes, I am cynical.

And in part my apathy is a result of recognizing my own insignificance. Someone once said that our shock and grief over the death of a loved one is not in response to their passing, but in anticipation of our own. My grandma is dying of cancer. The psychological effect of that is to throw everything else in the world into pale contrast.  Still, there are days I call her up just to hear her voice again and remind myself that, to paraphrase Monty Python, she’s not dead yet.  Those calls and our visits are a way of forestalling the grief a little while longer.

Having read Philip Roth’s Everyman last year, a novel specifically about death, I am reminded how the only possession of his father’s the protagonist owns is his watch, which still works perfectly decades after the old man passed on. And after the protagonist dies, the life the watch represents fades even further into antique insignificance as the timepiece goes on ticking in the possession of someone who never knew the original owner, except perhaps via anecdote.

Maybe Roth meant the watch as a symbol for the persistence of human memory. I viewed it as a sad symbol of loss.

Nothing much remains of us after we die. How platitudinous that sounds! Poets have written it better. At one time, I could have quoted you a line or two from memory, something about a fading rose, or time’s whinging chariot. Even poets, I think, are a bit vain in their assumption that their work will long survive them. For after all, time and the disregard of mankind can devour a book as easily as the worm.

In terms of the age of the world, people have been putting their thoughts into writing for a very short space of time, and the vast majority of these writings have already disappeared. It seems foolish to believe in the permanence of human endeavors. Our own technology, or rather the misuse of it, could easily put us back into the stone age in a matter of hours.

Yes, I am apathetic about reading, too. As I have mentioned to my therapist, I don’t understand why I no longer love books and reading the way I used to. His response is that “You can’t expect to go through your whole life and never change.”

Yes, but I don’t even regret the change. That’s what disturbs me. Why don’t I feel anything more than a slight tinge of sorrow at the fading of my dreams, desires, and even my former interests, all of which were once so bound up in reading?

“Well, what do you expect your reaction to be? To kill yourself?” My therapist says (in my daydream therapy session, not in real life).

I don’t know. Should I not at least feel nauseated? And then I think, “Funny how even as I discuss in a detached way my loss of interest in literature and reading, I unconsciously reference a book: Sartre’s Nausea.”

I do not even feel anything classically existential, however. If anything, I feel desensitized, numb to what is happening to me. Rather like during my vasectomy, I can feel invisible hands pulling and tugging, but there is no pain where there ought to be agony.

I am changing, into what I do not know. Or perhaps the change is solely a change in perception. Even before my grandma fell ill, I had begun to feel increasing disinterest in books and writing. The disinterest in writing goes back into the winter. I have stopped keeping any kind of journal, other than this blog. Even before that, I had decided that writing fiction was pointless, and I was not even enjoying it much anymore. I could see the shallowness of my own writing the way, at one time, I could detect the insipidity of a bestselling paperback novel. Indeed, my writing was even worse. The author of a trite romance novel had at least completed a work of fiction and got it published. I had no such distinction.

So what was the point in pressing on? My own vanity and childishness became apparent.

I tell these things to my therapist, and I am not sure he sees what I am getting at. I am not sure I understand fully, either. I speak of an awakening to my own insignificance, or a stripping away of my delusional thinking, and he seems to see an inferiority complex. What I see is how foolish I have been, what a waste of time I have made of my thirty-three years.

Whereas once I thought I recognized some intelligence in me, now I see a blatant void of ignorance topped off with egotism. This is why I don’t discuss politics. Anyone can easily refute what I argue. Everyone, including myself, has an opinion they have fortified with essential fallacies and formulaic responses. I hear people arguing against the Iraq War, and I can’t help but think, “Yes, but there is an equally valid argument on the other side.” And vice versa. To some extent in debate, we all simply repeat our preconceived ideas and expound upon our prejudices.

Pointless. Pointless to argue. Pointless to read. Pointless to write. Pointless to strive for more than a daily dose of pleasure. Pointless.

Starting next week, I am going to begin seeing a new therapist closer to home. I have been driving an hour each way to a doctor in a neighboring town, and though I liked his bluntness and his willingness to dispense advice, the drive has proven too difficult to make regularly. I could blame gas prices, but it is more a result of my own laziness. I found myself canceling appointments simply because I did not want to make that drive, on top of the driving I do the rest of the week.

In talking with my new therapist over the phone, I think he is much in the model of my previous therapist. He said it is unusual these days to find a therapist who refuses to give advice or actually converse with a patient about their problems. Nonetheless, that was my first model, and I fear getting a doctor like that again.

I want advice. I want someone to tell me what is wrong with me.