Existential Crisis

Get ready, guys, this is going to be a long one.

Let me start off by saying – for about the hundredth time – I apologize for my recent absence. I’m not going to make up an excuse – you’ve heard it all before (although, in case you forgot: school, instruments, sport, reading, etc.) But, but, but… Exciting news: I will be posting a new review on 1 March (this Saturday). But I can’t tell you what for. But be excited anyway.

Back to the problem at hand.

It’s around 10 p.m., and I just got home from a practice for our school’s annual production. As one does when one gets home at 10 p.m., I picked up my Music books, and began to cram frantically for the opera terminology test I have tomorrow, while simultaneously trying to check Twitter, my e-mails, WhatsApp, and occasionally counting the ceiling tiles.

So there I was, casually minding my own business, when – BAM. Existential crisis.

If you have never yet experienced an existential crisis, you must be a unicorn. That’s the only explanation, really. Or else, maybe your time has just not yet arrived. But do not worry, my fair child. It will come soon enough. *cue evil laughter and thunder crashing*

The Urban Dictionary gives the following explanation for an existential crisis:

“A deep, obsessive concern with unanswered questions about the meaning of life and existence, resulting in the disruption of one's daily life and characterized by long or short-lasting bouts of apathy and depression.”

Okay, so this may be the denotation of an existential crisis, but I don’t find it all that accurate. My definition is a little different.

Imagine: You’re sitting quietly, working at your desk and generally just staying out of life’s way, when suddenly your mind freezes. You look up, and the sudden realization comes to you.

You are totally, completely, utterly irrelevant.

Like, imagine that song on your iPod from 2005 that you always skip past but have been too lazy to delete – that’s how irrelevant you are.

You’re as irrelevant as a dead earthworm buried five kilometers underground.

You’re as irrelevant as the apostrophe on a twelve-year-old Tumblr user’s keyboard.

You’re as irrelevant as Will Smith’s other son (look it up - he has three kids: Trey, Willow and Jaden.)

So you sort of just sit there letting your brain freak out about how nothing you’re doing will ever matter in the world, and how society’s pretty much the worst thing that’s ever happened to the human race because how are you supposed to be yourself when there’s always something society expects you to do and why is school even important if you’re just going to end up working at Mac Donald’s anyway and what if Physics is all just a lie we’re being told to keep us from finding out the truth of the universe –

You get the picture.

So eventually you sort of just:

As a teenager living in this beautiful modern world with so many wonderful distractions and attractions, I am not afraid to admit that I have been through this very procedure at least three times. This month. I am in no way proud to admit that at one point I must’ve stayed on the floor for about forty-five whole minutes just letting my brain freak out about the future, and how I was so irrelevant in The Big Scheme of Things, until I eventually had to pull myself up in search of a Hershey’s Cookies and Crème bar. (Let’s face it, at times like these, only chocolate can ease your pain.)

I guess this is the part where I’m supposed to give an inspirational message about life, right?

Umm…

Well, firstly, don’t do this:

You’ll get dirt on your face and you’ll smell like floor, so that won’t help you make a good impression on people.

Secondly, worrying about the future – among other things – is just about the most useless thing you could ever do. Ever. Ever. Think about it – what use is it going to have to worry about something you’re not even sure will ever happen? Life isn’t supposed to be that hard – just take it one bit at a time and don’t expect too much from yourself. We’re all only human. Nobody seriously expects you to do fifteen subjects at school, and pass every single one of them with 100%, and then go on to become the greatest physicist the world has ever known. And if they do expect that from you, it's not worth listening to their opinion any more, because they're obviously delusional and need to be checked into an asylum.

Lastly, and most importantly, always make sure you have something in your house that will be able to get you up off the floor and back to normal again. Well, I say “normal”, but I mean in a state of… not lying on the floor. If that makes any sense whatsoever. And you can interpret that to mean something really deep, like there’s always a silver lining or that mush we’ve all heard before, but in reality I just mean that you’re not seriously going to get off that floor unless you know there’s a tub of ice cream as big as your head downstairs.

I wish you well with your future existential crises.

P.S. Pictures are taken from danisnotonfire’s YouTube video on his own Existential Crisis, which actually relates a lot to what I was saying… Watch it here.