I have a hope that the future will be better. Not so much my life (although that will improve in bits and pieces, but it could also get worse. Who knows) but the world in general. I don’t know if I will live long enough for humanity to gain meaningful control over the brain and its wiring, but I’d like to live to see that. Our brains are wired to torture us mercilessly and I’d like to be alive when we know enough to shut that off.
There is a saying about war ‘war is long periods of pure boredom interspersed with moments of sheer terror’. In a more subtle and less intense way that is what life is much of the time. Long periods of routine punctuated by random traumas to you and people you care about.
There’s more here than you could shake a spear at.
What keeps me going? The belief that the parts of my life that aren’t so hot are going to get better and an appreciation for the parts of my life that give me a charge. An underlying feeling that life is worth living.
I’ve been diabetic for over 20 years, never thought of losing my foot or anything else, just followed the Dr.'s advice. Not living will happen someday but I haven’t seen nearly enough yet, done nearly enough, or even read nearly enough.
Call it motivation if you will but any alternative save dying is enough for me.
I say that out of a vague memory of a Sissy Spacek movie (on TV) [Googled - it was** 'night, Mother**]. Her character was planning her suicide the whole movie and her mother was trying to argue her out of it. At one point her character said something about there being nothing worth living for, and that it didn’t even need to be something big. If she really liked and looked forward to tapioca pudding, that would have been enough.
Well, I have a tendency to enjoy little things. Tapioca pudding needs a dollop of whipped cream to be worth living for, but that’s easy to arrange.
For me, it’s my endless curiousity. There’s always one more thing I need to look up, or one more book I need to read, movie I need to watch, or music I need to hear. When I stop being curious, it’s time to throw in the towel.
I like the sensation of existence. I like breathing in sea air, I like dewy grass tickling my bare feet, I like the feeling of cold water running down my throat. I like music and books and darkness and sunlight and food and writing and that chirping sound my cat makes when I pet her. And I like being me. The sense that no matter what happens, I will always have the same consciousness, the same thoughts, the same existence.
I don’t think there’s an afterlife. I mean, I can’t be sure, but I doubt it. So all we have is infinite nothingness on either side, stretching out and out and out, and in the middle of it all this minute little speck of consciousness that we’re experiencing right now. I want to get as much out of the ride as possible.
I’ve never seen a volcano up close, or been to Australia, or played the bagpipes, or gone to a World Series game, or woken up to hear on the news that SETI found an intelligent signal, or that somebody has gone ahead and bred that dino-chicken thing, or seen a live kabuki show, or…
I guess I’m with Skald. I’m in constant pain. I wish that I didn’t live in a state of pain, but I choose to do so because I choose to be with my family. I choose to remain with my husband. I choose to raise my children.
In-between all the crap I manage to pack in loads of fun. Bikes, amusement parks, shooting, fishing and generally acting as immature as possible. When I can’t do any of that anymore, all I need to do is skip my nitro a couple times when the elephant visits and its off to the Happy Hunting grounds. All in all, not a bad deal in total.
Currently, it’s mostly the kids. They need me. I can’t imagine breaking their little hearts by abandoning them.
But even when I didn’t have them, I’ve always had this (incredibly annoying) spark of hope that makes me wonder if life might, somehow, someday, rise above the pain and anguish of living it, above the dreadful mundanity of the everyday slog, to something just a little better. Maybe even with moments of contentment. Milliseconds of joy. Or the feeling of the sheer awesomeness of the universe.
When I get seriously depressed, that spark is a major pain in the ass. 99.9% of me just wants to be done with it all. But this stupid, meddling 0.1% keeps popping up and interfering.