I barely graduated high school. I didn’t walk at graduation and had to take summer school classes to get my diploma. During my senior year I took seven classes — while everyone else was going home after lunch and waiting on college acceptance letters, I was staying on campus readying myself for the exciting world of remedial science and a future of community college classes.
So it probably wouldn’t shock you to hear that I wasn’t much of a reader growing up. I liked video games, basketball and skateboarding — academics and school were not in my wheelhouse.
Years were spent toiling away through community college classes that I hated only to flunk out my first year at university. Then, somewhere in my twenties I got my hands on a copy of Walden — Thoreau’s classic on escaping the doldrums of daily living — and that was the starting point for a new direction. I began to take an interest in the liberal arts. I took a humanities class and was absolutely delighted by Hemingway, Sartre, and Tolstoy. I went from flunking out to getting straight A’s. I got my hands on Bukowski, Chekhov, Proust . . . I fell in love with Hesse — and still love Hesse.
Then I got my hands on “An Introduction To Existentialism,” by Robert G. Olson and started digging into the existentialists.
A “brooding recluse” was born.
I started looking up to these “philosopher’s of despair” and began assuming the identity of a “pained genius.” Only these pained geniuses could understand me. I too, was so smart that I also towered above everyone else and this was the only possible reason for why I was terrible in school. A Good Will Hunting if you will ;).
In a way reading these books was an attempt at proving to myself that I could be smart too. I spent many years in my room reading fancy books with fancy titles so that I could convince myself of how much smarter I was than everyone else. Books offered me a hiding place from the rest of the world but most importantly — a hiding place from myself. With my head constantly buried in a book, I didn’t have to look at myself and ask any hard questions.
After more than a decade of taking college classes, I graduated from film school and worked for a few years in the Bay Area video industry. Another equally unsatisfying road. Pack up the gear, sit in traffic, unload it, stand around doing nothing for 3–12 hours, pack up the gear, sit in traffic some more . . . Was this what I was going to do for the next twenty to thirty years?
I decided to go back to school and study philosophy. I met with the chairman of the philosophy department at the school that I graduated from and stated my ambitious intentions. We agreed that I was a natural and philosophy would be the launching point for my next great success.
I didn’t last more than a semester.
Fast forward many years later and I found myself with a shelf full of books — some of which I had no understanding of — and at some point I began to ask myself . . . why?
What is the point of all this damn reading? What is it doing for me? What is the end game?
Looking for the answers to unanswerable riddles. Looking for the one answer that will solve everything. Obsessing with feeling smart to resolve insecurities. Desiring to project an image of perfection. Attempting to satisfy my ego so that I could be admired. All of this time spent trying to impress others . . . everyone but myself.
In a life spent trying to live up to the expectations of others, I would have been far better served asking myself what I would like to do with my time and why — and I don’t need to study philosophy in order to understand that.
More time passed and I finally I made a decision.
Get into the business of living. Go fail. Get rejected. Do something.
“Man is a nihilating nothingness” are words that have never helped anyone in any meaningful way and should be placed into the garbage bin.
What is the value of philosophy if not to organize one’s life in the most satisfying and meaningful way possible?
It boils down to what you do with your time during the day and if — to you — that is meaningful and worthy of your time.
What am I doing right now . . . and why?
