How does one cope when one feels like one has no real goal in life? I'm sure that must be rather common when one reaches middle age, especially if one has no significant other, the children are raised and work has become just another routine. There comes a time when one keeps listening in one's mind to John Mellencamp's words: "life goes on, long after the thrill of living is gone", or Sufjan Stevens' "there is only a shadow of me, in a matter of speaking I'm dead".
But then one keeps on living. Because there are friends to talk to, books to read, movies to watch. I remember a passage in Erico Veríssimo's O Tempo e o Vento, when some old woman dies and her friend says something like "poor thing, she will never know like the Toutinegra do Moinho (a very popular novel serialized at the beginning of the 20th century) will end!". (By the way, a disclosure - A Toutinegra do Moinho was my grandmother's favorite book).
So I guess it all comes down to biology. We're animals, living beings product of millions of years of evolution, destined for survival. It's in our DNA, the pressure for survival. That's why, in spite of all the existential and philosophical anguish and whatever, we still hold on to life.
Simone de Beauvoir said it beautifully in La Force des Choses:
Oui, le moment est arrivé de dire: jamais plus! Ce n’est pas moi qui me détache de mes anciens bonheurs, ce sont eux qui se détachent de moi: les chemins de montagne se refusent à mes pieds. Jamais plus j ene m’écroulerai, grisée de fatigue, dans l’odeur du foin; jamais plus je ne glisserai solitaire sur les neiges des matins. Jamais plus un homme. Maintenant, autant que mon corps mon imagination en a pris son parti. Malgré tout, c’est étrange de n’être plus un corps; il y a des moments où cette bizarrerie, par son caractère définitif, me glace le sang. Ce qui me navre, bien plus que ces privations, c’est de ne plus rencontrer en moi de désirs neufs: ils se flétrissent avant de maître dans ce temps raréfié qui est désormais le mien. Jadis les jours glissaient sans hâte, j’allais plus vite qu’eux, mês projets m’emportaient. Maintenant, les heures trop courtes me mènent à bride abattue vers ma tombe. J’évite de penser: dans dix ans, dans un an. Les souvenirs s’exténuent, les mythes s’écaillent, les projets avortent dans l’oeuf: je suis là et les choses sont là. Si ce silence doit durer, qu’il semble long, mon bref avenir!
Yes, the biological pressure is paramount, we are after all just animals product of the time honoured evolutionary process, meant to live. And then, there is always the perfect poem by Dorothy Parker, more insightful than most philosophical treaties.
Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren’t lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.
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