Oddness

Meaningless, meaningless. Everything is meaningless.

I don't know offhand who wrote the book of Ecclesiastes, but I can often understand how he felt. Now before you get all worried about me, I want to say that I am not saying I am depressed or that I think life has no meaning. That is not really the level on which I connect to the sentiments presented in the book. No, my moments of meaningless...ness...are somewhat different.

I will often find the most mundane things to have lost all meaning, all sense of purpose. I will suddenly be unable to come up with a valid reason for the actions that are taking place.

For example, sometimes I find cooking to be an extremely meaningless task. No matter how long we live, we have to keep eating to survive. Our bodies need the nutrients found in the food. There are days where that information overwhelms me, and I find no difference between mixing spices and other ingredients into hamburger to make chili and just eating every ingredient separately. Cooking loses its purpose.

It's more than that, though. It's like, I sometimes lose context for what is occurring around me. I compare it to the difference between a canine sense of smell and a human sense of smell. When I smell chili cooking on the stove (maybe I should have written this post after supper...I'm hungry), I smell...chili. But when a dog smells chili, he smells (or so I have been led to believe) hamburger, chives, beans, chili powder, garlic, tomato paste, water, and whatever else you throw in there. Ooh, onions. Gotta have onions. Anyway, the difference is, I smell the chili as a whole, the dog smells the chili as its individual parts. And sometimes, that happens to me in how I perceive the world.

I don't just see the whole of what is going on around me, but I see the individual parts that make up the whole, and they quickly lose their meaning. I go to write something on paper, and instead of writing words with a pen on the paper, I am suddenly aware of the ink flowing from the pen, the curves and lines of the letter, the colour and grain of the paper and it is like what is being written has no connection to how it is being written. The words begin to lose meaning.

It is especially difficult with tasks that must be repeated, such as cooking. I see the individual components, the effort that goes into each step and the whole begins to break down. I no longer find the steps being taken to be worth the end result, especially when it must be done again soon.

Sometimes it makes simple tasks more difficult because I cannot view a task as a whole, but I become aware of the individual parts that go into the whole, as opposed to taking the whole for itself. For instance, do you ever really think about how you walk? There are muscles that have to contract and expand all over your body just to take a step. Your knee joint must bend. Your ankle pivots. Your toes take the weight and then push off, propelling you forward, even though, and this is the part that gets me, the other foot is not moving at all. It is planted firmly on the ground, yet it is still involved. Have you ever been aware of the non-moving foot when you take a step, unless it is in significant pain? I have.

This whole phenomenon was especially prevalent in my last months/weeks at BFA. I think it must be related to other events going on in my life, because it hasn't been nearly so bad since I returned home. And it is not something I control. I don't decide to be aware of everything. It is more like a feeling that washes over me - I am suddenly, without warning, hyper aware of individual components, and that starts to render the whole as being meaningless. It becomes like trying to conceive of the whole of an aircraft carrier while standing with your nose pressed firmly against the side. All you can see is the one spot of grey paint directly in front of you. The whole is simply non-existent.

The worst is when it relates to conversations. Sometimes I find talking to be completely bewildering, even when there isn't a pretty girl in the vicinity. And it is not just my own words that become meaningless. It is language in general. It is like my brain picks up the words and just stares at them, like it hasn't encountered anything like it before, and it does not know what to do with it. This happens very easily when I am in large groups. I get overwhelmed sometimes when I am around too many people, especially people I don't know, and I just can't comprehend what is being said.

Now for those of you worried about me, take a deep breath and relax. This is not something that incapacitates me. I do not suddenly freeze, unable to take a step or to do anything. It is not a phobia or anything like that. I don't even find it disturbing or frightening so much as I find it weird and intriguing. I would not say that it is a medical problem or that I have a deep psychological disorder. It really just comes down to a matter of perception. And like I said, it happens more often when I am under considerable stress (actually, I can't pinpoint its cause that specifically. I just know that it happens more often under different circumstances, but whether it is stress that is the unifying cause or not I am not sure).

Meaningless, meaningless. Everything is meaningless. I know what you mean, buddy. I know what you mean.