Riding a small dog with a square saddle

As children, we take the world as we find it, not suspecting it could be different. During adolescence, we think the rules were made neither by us nor for us and we’re busy believing we’ll write them all anew.

Then we enter adulthood and usually, the questions hit us. What is the meaning of this? Why is this happening? Who am I? What is my purpose? Is there a god? Why am I here? What am I doing? Welcome to the sempiternal search for the Meaning of Life.

It is a human trait but most people I know seem to have found, if not their answer, at least parameters within which they can live comfortably.

To me, these questions are ever present, nagging me, gnawing at me, dizzying me. I’ve lived with them for about nineteen years and I’m not an inch closer to answers.  How many times do I sit on the train commute, staring through the window, trying to make sense of it all, while people around me discuss, recipes, kids, or the latest at the office.

Bring it up during a lunch conversation, and I get odd looks. Friends patiently try to humour me but I can see in their eyes that it’s pretty far from them, not part of their daily reality or consciousness. Most people either seem to have found their goal, their purpose, their intent, their reason for being…or don’t seem to wonder about it.

I passionately envy those who are too busy living to be plagued by existentialist questions. I do wish I could shut off the little pondering observer on my right shoulder and lose myself in life. But I suppose asking questions, seeking answers is just an intrinsic part of my personality and I’m stuck with that for the rest of this life. It gets very tiring sometimes.

This brings me to a difference I have found between France and North America. In France, people enjoy debating ideas and concepts for the sake of it, like flexing and exercising their brains, their powers of reasoning and logic and deduction. It can make for long, sometimes abstract but fascinating exchanges.

Here, it seems taboo to exercise your brains in a strictly intellectual way. People get a little embarrassed, uncomfortable. They might go along with it for a while, but they are visibly itching to get back on safe and superficial subjects. There are exceptions, of course, but in a general way, intellectual debates are not popular. I think I live in a society where my brain is under stimulated, one of the reasons I surf the web like a maniac. Shallow conversation is safe, but deep conversation and clash of ideas are INTERESTING. Amen.