Existential crisis – Anton Martin Smith Writer

by anton martin smith by antonmartinsmithwrites@gmail.com

I have an inner void.

It’s there.

But that’s not the interesting thing.

The interesting thing is this question:

Is the void normal, or is it a pathology.

I used to think it was depression –

But then when older & wiser, I realised this wasn’t so.

Was it the void that all ‘children of divorce’ carry their whole lives?

Perhaps the void is the child of the ‘child of divorces torment’ itself.

Perhaps the void is some generalised genetic trauma.

Of being a bedraggled ‘colonial sendoff’ out of England in the 19th century to New Zealand.

Perhaps it’s a lack of love, now so ubiquitous & long lived –

That I’ve forgotten every mammal – including myself needs it.

Perhaps the void helps me,

Perhaps it’s there to make me think.

Perhaps if I forced myself to not think about the void,

I wouldn’t be writing about it now.

The truth is that the void becomes your colleague –

Because it’s always there, it’s predictable – there’s a maligned but real comfort.

You don’t know what it would even be like to be without the void.

They say the everyman lives a life of quiet desperation.

Yet I’m sure my ‘the void‘ is more special than that.

My void writes poems, while their voids write better CV’s –

It can’t be the same thing as everyone elses void.

Please lord let my void be unique, one of a kind, a gem, a unicorn.

Make my misery mine, I do not want to share.

Some times all a man or woman has is their misery –

Or the delusion that’s it’s becasue of their personalised little grief story.

Maybe to be human you have a built in the void as per factory settings.

To deny our void-truth we try to reprogram ourselves with fancy life-setting.

But no matter how we try, the ‘return to factory setings’ button is always pushed.

Perhaps it is child-like folly to think I, or anyone, can beat the void.

For no one can deny their destiny & be better off for it.

Let us all raise a glass to the mysterious the void – be she a pervasively permanent beast,

Or he a spectre-like figment of our depleted imaginations.

I mean really – given we know nothing at all – what else is there to do?

To the void,

Our hang-around friend, our arch-enemy,

Our source of inspiration & exasperation,

We know you’re not going anywhere soon,

We all think you’ve been given far too bad of a rap lately,

So sit down & have a quiet drink with us won’t you?

I’ll make a table for the four of us –

Me, myself, I & you – the void.

if its anything like the last time,

It’ll be a real knees-up.

Oh..and one more thing…..

My dear the void, if you do decide to come – whatever you do….

….don’t tell anyone.

by Martin Anton Smith martinantonsmith@gmail.com

Over the last year or so,

The Boredom Interest Rate has been climbing dramatically.

Note: In my future formal reports, for simplicity, I shall refer to it as the acronym ‘B.I.R.’

When the B.I.R. rate was low, I could pretend I wasn’t actually bored as heck.

I could do this by putting on a CD, reading a little, or some casual Internet-ing.

I could use this slight-of-hand, because at low B.I.R. the increase in the principal amount of Boredom,

Stayed roughly the same.

Now with the B.I.R. rate skyrocketing, my brain sees these the smoke & mirror tactics for what they are -quant self-serving illusions.

Now I sit amongst that un-working chicanery, realising just how bored I have truly become.

Is this simply the inevitable curse I put on myself in training my mind so heavily for at least thirty years straight?

Is this the pain I have to endure for reading so many books?

For thinking so much?

Have I simply unwitting turned day-to day life into a prison for my mind?

With this boredom biting, I’m starting to see God’s warning about the ‘apple of knowledge’.

For ultimately it creates a shroud of isolation that wraps you in a cocoon of loneliness.

Unless of course, you are one of the lucky ones.

The lucky ones that have many others sitting around them in the same mental boat – or straightjacket – to readily share ideas with.

But even then, I’m not so sure those types are happy anyway.

At current, I have perhaps only a thin almost imperceptible sliver of that collegiality available.

I guess where their is a sliver, their is hope – so I should pray that the sliver is more than that.

Perhaps the sliver is the thin end of the wedge.

Perhaps the fat end of the wedge is hidden by perspective,

But is holding open the door to some kind of intellectual paradise,

To which I will soon be able to able to walk through.

But as I just alluded to, with the already collegial types – I am probably deluding myself – stupidly romanticising the so called intellectual life.

Yes, to be intellectual in nature is more likely a curse in an unthinking world –

And probably rightly so.

But would an intellectual trade their life for a surface-ly happy rich nouveau riche type without a bookcase?

No, this would not ever happen in a quadrillion years.

You see there’s another strange thing about intellectuals:

Don’t tell anyone this,

But we kinda love to be miserable.

Call it an inherent feature of intellectualism: self hatred.

Though in theory there is utility in this (so we tell ourselves anyway):

For some reason the right dose of misery works well for ideas & writing.

Perhaps that’s why we are loathe to trade the misery away.

Or perhaps I’m over-dressing it all –

Perhaps all it is is just plain comfort.

Plain run-of-the-mill, garden variety, predictable old comfort of knowing tomorrow will be much the same as today.

It’s a real psychic internal wrestling match:

The Comfort of Misery vs The Stress of the Unknown.

And the wise voice in my head is now telling me this:

Your problem with boredom is that you have an imbalance. You need a balance of the two to feel ok.

Wow that wise voice in my head, sure does know a thing or two.

If only I’d follow their sage advice more readily.

But if I did that, on top of not being bored, I also wouldn’t be a self-sabotager.

One day I hope I’ll finally let that Quinella come in a winner.

Surely one day in the distant future, I will allow myself a few small wins to creep into my life again.

The wise voice in my head has piped up again:

This is because your subconscious is still punishing you for supposed past misdeeds from decades ago, perhaps even way back to minor childhood.

The wise voice has some very good points.

I don’t know why I never force myself to truly take on the sage advice of the wise voice.

The BIR rate would become massively negative,

So, my boredom would evaporate almost immediately.

But I’d also be a different person overnight.

And I guess right now I’m not ready for that.

And so after all this self-conjured psychic appraisal – what of it all?

At least, if nothing, I suffer no delusions as to my current state.

For surely with a morsal of Truth lies at least a token of chance,

To someday throw at the wheel of (mis)fortune?.

For If I was also without Truth,

Surely what I’d have would be identically zero.

So yes, while this existential crisis continues,

There is still hope for me yet.

For one day someone might read these words and think to themselves:

“Wow he’s completely right”.

Here’s hoping.

Tag: Existential crisis

“The Boredom Interest Rate” (A Poem)