i must outpace death

Why can't we indulge in pleasure every day? Why can’t I come home from work, grab a drink, and entertain myself till the rising sun? I did my job after all, I spent an entire shift contributing to society. So why can I not enjoy myself after?

I am very new to the workforce, and it seems like most of my colleagues spend a good portion of their time at work looking forward to getting home, unwinding, and relaxing. The stress and pressure of work is mitigated by the tranquility of going home at night. But for some reason, when I get home and put on my favorite TV show,  I feel a gnawing inside my body.

An aching in my soul when I “waste away” the hours I spend at home, I have come to call this all too familiar sensation my productivity tick. It ticks to my watches tock, every hour that passes measures a deeper sense of failure. Throughout my childhood, I had understood it to be a fact of life. I assumed it was the manifestation of a basic human need to live a purposeful life. Yet, I never gave thought to what a purposeful life meant, or what steps I had to take to induce it. I assumed that if I simply spent the entirety of my day working (in any sense), the feeling would go away. Thus was set an easy scapegoat, for an unrelated goal. And I chased it, unsuccessfully, for too many years.

Last week, I sat down and really gave it a think. I now spend the majority of my day working a job, yet the tick remains deafening. Shouldn't it have shrunk a little? I know the human brain is flawed. Was the productivity tick really an appropriate compass for my life? Or is it dead weight that I am ready to shed?

In the past three months, I have turned around every single facet of my life. I am working a full-time job. I am eating clean - high protein, minimal sugars. I am exercising, 115 pushups a day. I get at least 6 hours of sleep a day. I spend the majority of my weekend outdoors, meeting my friends, and trying out as many new things as I can. It seems like I am doing all the things on the list. Nevertheless, every day is still filled with gloom - but I have exhausted my list of problems. The final boss - my productivity tick.

To begin, let's tackle my initial assumption. Humans must live a purposeful life. I strongly believe so. I have only one Youtube video on my bookmarks bar, a clip from Jordan Peterson on Joe Rogan’s podcast. He is talking about his multiple-decade-spanning breakdown of the idea of “rescuing your father from the belly of the whale”. He is an inspirational figure to me, and his talks share a theme. He believes that positive emotion is birthed from setting a path towards a goal, the highest goal one can manage. “Meaning”, is derived from following this path. Living a purposeful life. [1] The suffering of life, and the malevolence of the world, seem to be bearable through having a purpose.

So is the productivity tick a symptom of the lack of meaning in my life?  It seems like I am doing all the things on the list. The list of “good things for life” that I have built through interacting with various types of people throughout my life. So why the gloom? What more do I need? There are two things I know I will soon need. I need to improve my job prospects. I need to build a romantic relationship. But I seem to be on the right path for both. I have a job right now, and I am in university for engineering. I am spending time with friends, meeting new people, and I don't plan to start a family in the next decade anyways. So why the gloom? Looking around, I’m doing enough as compared to my 21-year-old peers. However, while my peers seem to enjoy spending time watching TV, playing games, and going out drinking, I cannot. I try these activities only to succumb to the agony of my productivity tick, to a seemingly worse degree than my peers. I end up paralyzed. Unable to be productive because I am weak, and unable to have fun because of the tick.

This all made me incredibly frustrated. If the gloom doesn't cease, what's the purpose of the list anyways? I felt cheated. Why do we need to do any of these things? It's useless. I should just go back to how I used to live life. I liked it more back then. Meeting people is hard. Exercise is hard. Working is hard. I should just quit it all. What's the point anyways, life is suffering. Why do anything?

Death. Death is the only phenomenon that every human must experience. The thought of death is unbearable, I ignore it for most of my life. Death is a burden too heavy for my young heart to lift. Death laughs in the face of all ambition, all purpose. Everything you did, or will do, will finally be reduced back to the ash from whence it came. In the face of death’s nothingness then, why do we humans strive?

Because that's what makes it worthwhile.

I can’t eat good pizza when I’m dead

I can’t laugh tears of joy when I’m dead

I can't be tucked into bed by my mother when I'm dead.

Surprisingly, death is the force that gives everything in our life purpose. You have to do it all now because it's the one shot you get. I must have a family, I must buy my parents a good life, I must sit atop Singapore’s tallest building amidst the stars, simply because I cannot do any of these when I'm dead! Most importantly, I have to do it NOW.

Death exists not only at the end of our life, but all through it. 2019-me is unrecognizable, I would call him dead. He set up well for my current self. 2022-me will soon be dead too. If I stop working now, my next self will suffer unfairly. Soon, our bodies will be aging, and our minds maturing. Every stage in life has its enjoyments, and I can't fall behind now, life only compounds.

A flame grows within my soul.

I know now why I must work, why I must endure, why I must persevere. It isn't for anyone. It isn't for myself.

I simply must not allow death to catch up to me.

I must outpace death.

And you must too.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FU1Po6qH7O8&ab_channel=ThoughtFeeder