Existential Crises Display Your Humanity
I have to say I believe that if you have not had some form of an Existential Crisis during your adult life or formative years, you are not Human. Whether you believe in God or Darwinian Evolution or some variant of both or neither, you will likely agree that what separate Us–human beings–from the rest of the animals around us is not our incessant series of primal needs but our ability to think, to be self-aware in a way that can take form in lasting records, and to create things that did not exist before but that may endure once they have come into being. Possessing that ability to reason and create leads us to question Life, its ephemeral nature, and our own Existences within it.
When we compare our life-spans to the World’s and the pace at which It goes about a great degree of Its business, our time here is pitifully, perhaps mercifully, brief. This is a fact. So it stands to reason, then, that people should contemplate this concept at some point during that brief moment. We are all going to die. We all know this. And anyone who doesn’t think about this is lying to himself. So how could we not pause at some point to ask ourselves about our functions on this earth, wonder about the point to our lives, and grapple with the question regarding whether there is, indeed, a point, and if there is not, how we could go about finding one.
There are those who do not think about such things. You can call them the Simple Souls who take things at face value and do not cave to the curse of Knowing and Wondering. Or they are too busy. Or too pragmatic. I used to think them lucky and unburdened. But now, I neither envy nor disdain them; I simply comprehend that they are different from I and that Knowing is not a curse, per se, but a heavy mantle I willingly accept. The Simple Souls are Human, of course, but they live a life closer to that of a different class of animal. This sounds disparaging and/or intolerant, but that is not how I mean it. The truth is that if these wise or lucky or uncomplicated folk go about their days without stopping to think about those days in a meta-manner, they have reduced their existences to a series of needs, and if our needs govern our actions, that does not “lower” us to the level of animals, maybe, but it makes us analogous to them. There is nothing wrong with this; it just differentiates those making use of their reason from those who either choose not to use it or never had it in the first place.
You could say the Existential Crisis is a problem only the Bourgeoisie or the upper classes sustain, but someone without time and money can just as easily, perhaps more easily, begin to question his lot in life and whether he has a calling or a place here or if it is “‘all for naught”, and if it is, then attempt to figure out how he could remedy this situation, etc. So to claim those suffering Existential Crises are but the self-indulgent wealthy is as inaccurate as it is ignorant. Moreover, anyone who has taken a moment to notice the painful disparity in wealth between people and in the justice within the world’s many systems and in luck, and anyone who has seen the arbitrary temperament of Nature and Human Nature, has found himself facing an Existential Crisis and a Crisis of Conviction, one in which he has wondered Why? and either found a dearth of answers or has made the choice to wade through an outlook morose or apathetic by feeling gratitude, having perspective, and providing answers where none were supplied. This is not a diatribe against religion or those who are religious–far from it. Those who do not question the Truths of life because they subscribe to a series of principles laid out in an existing and extant religion, philosophy, ideology, or home-grown set of tenets that accounts for the questions such Truths must create, 1) are not necessarily Simple because of this, 2) may never even have considered a Crisis, 3) may have consciously rejected the need for a Crisis because they have answers, 4) may have arrived at comfort through a Crisis, 5) are still capable of doubt and Crisis, and 6) belong to a true and other camp of Human who displays its Humanity through its creation or following of a set of thoughts that describe life as containing something More–perhaps even an After-Life.
You could also argue those riddled with questions regarding Meaning and Meaning-as-it-relates-to-Life have found themselves in this “predicament” because they have “watched too many movies” or “read too many books” and so now, as a consequence, have unrealistic expectations about life and all-too-romantic dreams the unfulfillment of which yield days painfully mundane and ultimately meaningless. But that’s not the case, either. People have considered their Existences since they evolved from that animal, quadrupedal state. “Existentialism” simply names in Movement form what people have felt, even if in passing, for millennia. Movies and books have come into being because creative people sought to record such feelings and share them with others, and we treasure these records because they, too, give a name to something we have all felt since we could give names to feelings and not simply surrender to the visceral world of need.
“Suffering” an Existential Crisis, then, is a deeply Human thing. It may even be a rite of passage, one we must all go through at least once to make sense of what on a fundamental level lacks it. Of course, the Crisis may morph into something negative when you can little see the light or practical aspects behind and within life, and it becomes a true Crisis, rather than simply a series of questions the asking of which may still allow you to function (albeit groggily), when it leads to lethargy and despair and a Nihilism of the spirit. In its worst form, it could lead to anger, violence, and/or self-nullification. Those are the extreme cases, but the Crisis is and should be common, and ultimately, it does not have to be bad.
Crisis connotes a highly negative experience, but if it passes, it forms a cataclysmic event that may also act as a sort of catalyst. In its best form, it serves as an impetus to action. It forces the complacent out of our reveries (or forms of “dogmatic slumbers”, if you will) and reminds us of the ticking clock in our midsts. Without wondering about our purposes in life, we would simply sit here waiting for death. Without feeling Existential urgency, we would do very little during and with life. So the Crisis jogs our minds into finding a task and attempting to best make use of what time lies before us and abilities lie within.
Quite frankly, those who do not and choose not to experience some form of Existential Crisis are not and cannot be truly Human. If they have managed to avoid it, not through the use of numbing agents like substance or delusion but through a sort of compartmentalized, dogged, and efficient self-righteousness, they have become automatons. They have used their agency to shut off agency for good. Why question? To question is to lead to discontentment, they may think. So they choose comfort over catalyst. But think, rather, that the Existential Crisis reminds you not that you are “only Human”, but Wonderfully so.