I sometimes wonder what it must be like to have a purpose. What must it be like, I wonder, to not question the meaning of your existence, to not doubt the necessity of your being, to not constantly ask oneself what possible reason there could be for your continued life on this miserable planet?

It is bizarre, knowingly existing without a purpose. I say knowingly because, from what I have observed so far, most people seem to exist quite happily without any real purpose. Normal people might strive to buy their first house and have a family, or something similarly boring, but none of it strikes me as really giving life a purpose. So what is the point? Must I get out of bed every morning, go to work, eat, drink and shit, just to go to bed in the evening and repeat it again the next day for the rest of my life? Where is the meaning in that? 

I suppose I am jealous of those for whom having a family or having nice things are a purpose, because even if it feels empty to me, at least it isn’t for them. Is it that easy to give life a purpose for most people? That sort of question doesn’t feel like something you can really ask, at least not without seeming slightly psychotic – “excuse me, when you decided you wished to have children, did that take away the feeling of your existence being meaningless?” is the kind of question that would probably get me nothing except a confused and slightly terrified look of bewilderment. 

Even as I write this, I wonder why I am cursed with the need to question things so relentlessly. Why can I not just be? It must be so wonderful to be able to just be, to be able to just go about your life without continually asking yourself whether it is really worth it. Regardless, whether I feel my life has meaning or not, what choice do I really have? Unless I were to take my own life, which I’d rather not do, what options do I have, other than to get on with it? Yet this cold-hearted logic gets me no further towards being able to accept my seemingly purposeless existence – if anything, it merely reinforces its meaninglessness.

Does my life absolutely have to have purpose? I suppose there is no rule stating as such, and I have lived an ostensibly meaningless life up until this point, so logically there is no reason I can’t go on doing so, yet this does nothing to shed light on the darkness I feel within my soul, the blackness that pervades my every thought, the hollowness of my very being. When I think of my life up until now, I struggle to remember anything of significance, or very much at all for that matter, and when I attempt to envisage what my life might be like in the future, I have difficulty imagining beyond what I might have for dinner tomorrow evening. 

You see, to live without purpose is to live without meaning, and to live without meaning is to struggle to feel even the slightest hint of gratification for the things one does in daily life. New purchases, fun activities and significant milestones all pass without providing one with any sense of enjoyment or satisfaction. I get a new car roughly every 12-18 months, I holiday 3-4 times a year, I go to big events, I spend time with friends, I go out for nice meals, I buy nice clothes and I partake in an abundance of hobbies, yet none of these give me any sense of actual positive emotion, just a feeling that, as always, I am passing the time, distracting myself from the sense of emptiness that envelops me continuously. 

There is absolutely no sense of self. If someone were to ask what makes me who I am, I could reel off the things I get up to and the things I ‘enjoy’ in life, but I would be at a loss were I to attempt to actually describe who I am. You see, there is no me, I don’t exist, my body is a vassal for a mind that struggles to understand why it must go on existing in a world that clearly has nothing of importance to offer. I am what I provide to others, which is stability, reassurance, support and good humour, yet even this is less and less important as the darkness takes hold, causing me to withdraw into myself and the number of people who care for me to inevitably decrease. 

Perhaps there is a contradiction there, perhaps what I can provide to others is my true purpose, and perhaps my never-ending search for a purpose is actively hindering the purpose I already have, although I find this hard to believe. If our purpose is to provide purpose for those around us, then what is the point? Everything would be much easier if we all just ceased to exist. No, giving others a reason to exist cannot be the reason for ones own existence. 

So what is? I don’t feel like it is too much to ask, in all honesty. Why must it be so hard to simply want to be alive? I didn’t ask to be placed on this planet, yet here I am, struggling, as I have done my entire life, to find the will to be here. I would wager that those who unknowingly live with purpose, those who have never questioned the reason for their existence, which seems to be almost everyone, will have absolutely no idea what I’m talking about, and I envy them enormously for that. How is it fair that the thought never once crosses most people’s minds, yet for me, the thought consumes me entirely and I can think of nothing else? Fairness does not come into it at all. 

I don’t know why I can’t find my purpose in life and I don’t know if I ever will – all I know is that the longer this goes on, the lonelier I become. It becomes more difficult to get out of bed in the morning, to speak to friends, to do my job, to smile, to be. I doubt there is a lonelier feeling in the world than wondering if your continued existence is necessary, and I doubt there is a more painful feeling than realising it isn’t. 

“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.” ― Oscar Wilde