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I think it's because it's February and raining and I just answered that question about dreams, but I'm suddenly seized with a dread that my life has been mostly a ghastly waste of time and a parade of opportunities I missed through fear, inertia or simply being too thick to realise what they were. Do you ever get this feeling? It's certainly not depression or a hatred of life - it's more the combination of a basic love of life with a sense of bitterness and guilt that I've not made more of it. Of course the obvious thing to think is "Don't spend so much time posting to ILE then" but it's more fundamental and also unplaceable - if I could think of the practical steps I could take to shake the feeling off then I probably wouldn't have it.

This is all just a big splurge when I could have said "Aimlessness - Classic Or Dud?" and you'd have got the point. Or maybe it's that middle-class guilt I keep reading about!

― Tom, Tuesday, 5 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

New "Why didn't I become a barrister like my mother wanted?" answers!

― Tom, Tuesday, 5 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Yes Tom you have described my life. Good, innit?

― N., Tuesday, 5 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Maybe we're otherkin.

― Tom, Tuesday, 5 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

The more you make of your life, the less life there is to....

Oh, I'm trying to think of a decent platitude here. Life is what happens while we are not making stuff of it. Does relentless achievement make is any happier? What I object to more is when my procrastination and general lack of lustre gets in the way of me doing what I want to do (missing a film last night because I left work five minues late...)

― Pete, Tuesday, 5 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Okay Tom, why didn't you become a barrister?

― Trevor, Tuesday, 5 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

It seemed kind of too oppositional, Trevor.

Im hoping by the way that everyone will say "Yeah this anomie is part of the human condition" not "Stop whining bourgeois dog".

― Tom, Tuesday, 5 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Well it certainly is part of the human condition, although to be honest these days I can't help thinking I should be doing LESS. Without our age old drives and impulses our race would have died out millenia ago. It's just unfortunate that the by-product of these drives is dissatisfaction.

I think people in general would be happier once they acknowledge that they will never reach a state of complete fulfillment in their lives - aspiration is a bottomless pit, and if you start to feel like the pit is full, THEN I think you need to worry.

― Trevor, Tuesday, 5 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

But are you happy with how your life is Tom?

Daydreaming is leathal. You can spend hours sitting and creating a perfect existance, so when you stop living in your own head the real world seems terribly flat by comparison. You then get the added blow of knowing that not only do things feel flat, but you have just spent time that could have gone towards making your daydreams (or something like them) a reality sitting around on your own.

My head is firmly in the clouds today. I cannot dislodge it.

(Middle class guilt? I now feel terrible for posting the dreams question - sorry)

― Anna, Tuesday, 5 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

At the end of the day, you can always turn round to yourself and say, "At least I didn't write Lady in Red". This is very consoling.

― Trevor, Tuesday, 5 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I used to feel this way a lot, but now when I think of some of the opportunities I've passed up I see the reasons why they probably wouldn't have worked out the way I envisioned them anyway.

― Nicole, Tuesday, 5 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Daydreaming is leathal

That's odd. I did that last week. My misspelling is infecting your BRANE.

― N., Tuesday, 5 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

No guilt required re. dreams queston Anna - an excellent question which I thought about too much.

― Tom, Tuesday, 5 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Oh also yes I am happy with my life, very much so, but I feel it's the kind of happiness that could deaden into a numbed complacent contentment (which maybe would feel GRATE but from which there would be no return) and I feel that the options and time with which to avoid this is running rapidly out.

― Tom, Tuesday, 5 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

My friend Mike Dawson has been sending buddhist precepts/aphorisms as text messages using the send to all facility on his mobile. I think it's some kind of conceptual art piece - he's an hartist dontchewkno. I've had one a week for the last three weeks- they all seem apt to this thread, so:

Fame and praise should be dispelled like mucous from your nose, because they delude you.

Because what arises now is the result of past actions, results will never match your present desires.

Friends, desirable things are like drinking salt water, they do not produce satisfaction. Therefore be content.

― misterjones, Tuesday, 5 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Young people today, you want the moon on a stick. Tom, if you are 'happy with your life, very much so' I suggest you be grateful for this and if you have angst to get out then write some poetry or something. Sigh.

― Emma, Tuesday, 5 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

should have said; they're all from something called Atisha's precepts. Just in case you're interested.

― misterjones, Tuesday, 5 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I have a dreadful feeling that what I want is excitement rather than happiness. And that way lies disaster.

― Tom, Tuesday, 5 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Anyway I'm going to try to divert this thread away from me me me and into where I originally wanted it to go - where does this dread of underachievement come from, is it a positive or a negative, and what can we do about it?

― Tom, Tuesday, 5 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

You could try ACHIEVING for a change you dirty wastrel.

― N., Tuesday, 5 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Try overachieving, and then you can curse yourself for ever doing so like me. Too much to do is much more of a dud than too little. I even started getting a stress induced eye twitch this week.

― Nicole, Tuesday, 5 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Depends how you define 'achievement'. I have a similar problem in reverse. Up to 2 yrs ago I was what I guess people would call a 'high flyer'. (I didn't feel like one though, but that's only partially related). I was travelling a lot thru work, working long hours, and earning decent money . But it gradually began to make me more miserable than you could imagine - really, really miserable.

To cut a long and boring story short, I passed it up in favour of a less stressful job to spend more time doing the things which make life worth living - family, friends, music, sport. I am a *different* person now. Despite feeling grateful that I no longer have to act the charade of corporate businessman,a role I never felt comfortable in, I sometimes get a nagging feeling that I *should* have knuckled down, gone for the big money and pushed on with my career. Isn't that what all those years of education were *for*?

― Dr. C, Tuesday, 5 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

This anomie is part of the dog condition, you whining bourgeois human.

― Momus, Tuesday, 5 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I am not sure that 'Aimlessness' correctly sums up the sensation that you describe in your first para, Tom. Isn't that more a constant not knowing (or not caring) where your life is going? That's different from the "dread" you describe of not making (or having made) more of your life - which seizes me too, fairly regularly.

In my case, I can point to specific things that I regret not doing (or, rather, not having done yet), it's not a totally abstract sensation. But yes, I think it does have something to do with the inertia induced by not having to worry unduly about where the next meal is coming from. Of course, identifying the problem is still only half the battle.

― Jeff W, Tuesday, 5 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

funny thiing about regret. It's better to regret something you have done, than something you haven't done. There are personal boundaries to this, of course.

― Deadman, Tuesday, 5 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I hate that saying cause my life is all about regretting things I haven't done and I don't need someone telling me that makes me a failure.

― N., Tuesday, 5 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

It's also nonsense - the time available in your life is miniscule compared to the available 'things to do' so if you followed this saying you'd be completely fucked. And when you don't do something it's always because you're doing something else instead even if that something is the status quo.

So for example: I've been going out with my girlfriend for a long time. It is possible that there are other people who I have not gone out with because of this. The Law of Regret above says that I should regret not going out with them more than my conscious choice to stay with my girlfriend i.e. it is a RECIPE FOR BROKEN HOMES and you should pay it no mind.

― Tom, Tuesday, 5 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Also - try telling that to a convicted axe murderer.

― N., Tuesday, 5 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I try not to get caught up in the whole what if I had done this or that?...There is nought I can do about it now, can only resolve to take up opportunities that present themselves in the future. I quite like the occasional bout of feeling aimless, it focuses the mind, or I just go with the flow. I listen to far too many Dinosaur Jr records.

― jel, Wednesday, 6 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

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