72. This Can't Be Life

As an unmarried, unchilded person, I have a tremendous amount of free time. And I spend a good bit of it thinking of what to do with myself in lieu of getting married and having children. Perhaps more than any living person I know, I am possessed with the question of what one ought properly to do with a life. How do we spend it without wasting it?

If it's possible to waste one's money, which is infinitely replaceable, it must be possible to waste one's life, which is not. And so, if a life is worth spending well, and I'm certain it is, how are we to spend it? For parents I think this question answers itself. Life begets life, and parents spend a good portion of their lives in raising their children. While I wonder if simply making more people is the whole point of life, I have to acknowledge that it's a least one helluva contribution. So... 2 points for parents.

What about the rest of us though? I could cheat and say I'll make a contribution by teaching or helping to enrich the lives of other people's children. I do plan to do those things. But I don't think that's the point. Why bother raising good people who raise good people who only raise more good people? What are they being raised to do? What are they being educated for? Why are they taught to speak? What is it that might one day be worth saying?

I have to think that the point of living isn't simply to make other living things; that the point of our existence isn't simply to ensure that we continue to exist. Human beings are uniquely capable of making and un-making the world, of leaving it differently than we found it (for better or worse), of doing things. And so what will I do?

The truth is that I have a fairly good idea why I'm here. I'm a writer. Whatever I contribute to the world will almost undoubtedly involve words printed on a page somewhere. But beyond that... beyond the work... In the day-to-day, what are we to do? How are we to breathe? How are we to live? How are we to speak and of what sorts of things? The answers to these questions feel, in a very real way, like matters of life and death.