Our Banal Existence

My friend Yariv was sharing a piece in New York Magazine by Elizabeth Wurtzel with me today, and he was drawing parallels between the discordant aimless yet defiant depression of the author with his own life and the way he feels as of late. And as always, because I always like accusing Yariv of being narcissistic, I told him, she is extremely "not banal", but I can see in him the capability of being banal and leading a perfectly ordinary life in a perfectly ordinary way, and being depressed in an extremely ordinary way. That Elizabeth Wurtzel possesses a borderline pathological phobia of banality, whereas he does not. And of course, I laughed at him for romanticizing his grad school career as unconventional.

But I was thinking, as I was performing such banal tasks as making boiling water for noodles and washing the dishes, that there was a time when I also romanticized my own life. When I thought I was the actual center of the universe. (I am still the center of my own universe, but I now acknowledge it is only my own). I guess I was a bright child, slightly neurotic and over-sensitive, but very much full of myself, and of course I believed I could and would become President of the United States.  Imagine my disappointment in fourth grade when I realized that given the current constitution there was no way. The next logical thing was to become a famous actress of course, and perhaps a great novelist.  When that got old, for awhile I imagined that I was the main character of some secret alien experiment; the music I heard on the radio while riding in my mother's car was not an accident, but some sort of carefully chosen background score to match my current circumstance and mood.  Of course, the aliens had some mechanism of observing me from afar, much like watching a reality TV show (although reality TV hadn't come into fashion yet when I was dreaming this up).

During this time, it was not just I felt I was destined to be important and extraordinary. It was also that I felt I was special, in terms of how I felt things, how I dealt with the world, and what went on in my mind day to day.  That my life story belonged in one of those very thick phonebook novels, like Anna Karenina (although her story is quite banal too if viewed through a lens that isn't Tolstoy).  I don't remember when this feeling faded, but eventually it did. I realized amongst the great thinkers, the manic creative types, the driven ambitious types of the world, I was really in essence a couch potato type -- happy to sit in front of the computer with my sister, chewing on gummy bears and watching TV shows to pass the time. That most of my sad stories or depressions were common to the other children of my generation and class. That really romanticizing my own place in the world was only about feeling good about myself and my existence.

But often, we depend on these things to live or feel a meaning of existence. Some feeling of importance in the world, whether stature, or fame, or respect. Or just the feeling that one's own way of living, of being, of philosophizing is superior, or at least unique, with respect to that of the masses.

What are the merits of feeling superior or unique? There is the floating theory that people who actually do achieve celebrity status, politicians, heads of multinational corporations, musicians, artists, are in some ways narcissistic and self-important. Of course, there is the danger of falling flat, failing to live up to your own self-image, and feeling depressed and lacking. Of one day discovering, perhaps, reality is in any case boring and ordinary, even all those wonderful stories and thoughts in your head, even if you try really hard to be abnormal. As perhaps Elizabeth Wurtzel-- despite her determination to prove, through her writing and living, that it isn't so-- is starting to realize.

It took awhile to come to terms with, but I am quite pleased with myself to say I am now quite comfortable and at peace with my own banality. Rather meanly, I'd like to smirk a bit at Elizabeth Wurtzel and say, you know, it's not quite so bad to want a real job, and save for retirement, and care about your friends only through facebook. Even if you lead a life of extreme pitiful banality, it's not so bad if you are enjoying yourself. In the end, perhaps it doesn't make much of a difference whether you are living in an unconventional depressed way or a conventional depressed way. Both ways, you are depressed. The unconventional can tell themselves that at least they have led interesting non-banal lives; while the conventional can bask in the comfort of a safety net and a savings account. And in both cases, people will tell themselves they are better off than the other(s).  Which perhaps is the saddest and most depressing part, what we end up telling ourselves.

But mostly I think I have this figured out and I pat myself on the back for not being supremely depressed, just occasionally ordinarily depressed, and mostly having good humour through it all. And  I feel all self-important and self-righteous in my own philosophy while claiming this, writing here as though there is an audience who thinks I am important enough to read.