One Woman Revival

I will not pretend to be a philosopher, but every mortal needs a framework around which to structure our lives. At the beginning of this year, I read 4000 weeks, a book by Oliver Burkeman, on how to find fulfillment in the limited time we are each given here on this earth. One of his suggestions for becoming more present was to cultivate hobbies, activities which are not meant to achieve larger objective and are even a little dorky but we find meditative or restorative. It led me to procure dahlia bulbs and re-home them in planter box on my balcony. Another of Burkeman’s suggestions was to accept that our outputs will not be perfect or meet the ambitious ideals we imagine in our heads. And thus, to just start somewhere, I began writing this blog as a creative outlet.

Now more than halfway through the year, my dahlias are starting to bloom, and my blog is finding its shape. But at the same time, I worry that my flowers are getting too much sun and outer petals are wilting or turning to a crisp. My inspiration for blogposts has also waned in the hustle of the summer months. I began to feel an existential weight hanging on my bones. Everything felt harder. Perhaps there was no point to any of it.

Amid my spiral, I stumbled on a short video describing the philosophy of Albert Camus. He postulated there was no meaning to life and this shared pointlessness was what bound humanity together. I had seen the play “Waiting for Godot” in my early twenties, which was inspired by Camus, but I had left the theatre confused by the underlying philosophy. Essentially, we are all Sisyphus pushing our boulders up the mountain only to watch these stones roll back down over again. Camus makes the case that Sisyphus could be happy despite his eternal toil. After all, he has a purpose even if it is a futile one.

I wondered if I could also be content, despite knowing the universe to be random and nonsensical. To truly commit to doing something for the sake of doing it and not for any gain at all. I water my dahlias and move them to the shade. I manage to wring out a few words for the blog every couple days. So I suppose I continue to trudge upwards.