Motherfucking cocksucker motherfucking shit fucker what am I doing? What am I doing? I don't know what I'm doing. I'm doing the best that I can. I know that's all I can ask of myself. Is that good enough? Is my work doing any good? Is anybody paying attention? Is it hopeless to try and change things? The African guy is a sign, right? Because if he isn't, than nothing in this world makes any sense to me. I'm fucked! Maybe I should quit. Don't quit! Maybe I should just fucking quit. Don't fucking quit! I don't know what the fuck I'm supposed to fucking do anymore! Fucker! Fuck shit!
--Albert Markovski in I Heart Huckabees
Facing a crisis of the existential kind, Albert turns to the husband and wife team of Bernard and Vivian for answers to some very difficult questions. Who am I? What does it mean? What is life really about? Is life about everything or nothing? Is my sense of self fixed pre-ontologically or does self emerge from a confluence of experiences, decisions, and resulting actions?
Regarding the self, I lean toward the latter; as far as I'm concerned, there is no essence prior to birth. The people we encounter, the experiences we have, and the decisions we make are the stuff of which the self is made. Still, the most significant question of the film remains: What does it all mean? Unfortunately, I struggle with this question on a regular basis. The idealist in me wants to believe that we're all interconnected, that my actions and beliefs contribute to the improvement of the human condition. I am you and you are me. If I hurt you, I hurt myself. If I don't oppose social injustice on the other side of the world, I'm ignoring my own plight. Interconnected, all our interactions contribute to the meaningful existance of humankind.
There's also the nihilist within me that says, "None of it matters. It's all bullshit. There's no meaning, no secret to life, and no great answer. This is all there is to it. In the grand scheme of things your actions don't mean squat." If there's no great meaning to life, then the answer is always in the now. If my writings, relationships, experiences, and actions don't mean a damn thing in the grand design (a nihilist, like myself, would question whether there's anything remotely resembling a grand design), I still experience the joy, and suffering, of the now. The way I treat myself and others in the present moment, determines the general quality of my life in the present moment. Since karma, salvation, and the like are meaningless, there's nothing beyond the here and now. Beyond this very moment, nothing matters.
Does life have meaning? Are we all interconnected? Does any of it matter? Is it all meaningless? Like Albert, I have no fucking idea. Shit.
Most days, I'm okay with that.
1 comment:
Maybe it's just me, but I'll take idealism over nihlism any day of the week.
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