There are days when I wonder what the point of everything is.
I don’t mean this in a terribly sad way. Nothing necessarily has to be wrong. Sometimes it happens on a perfectly ordinary morning, when the sun is out and everyone seems to be getting on with their lives. I wake up, check my phone, make something to eat, think about what needs to be done that day. And somewhere in between all these very normal things, the thought comes: Is this it? We wake up, do what needs to be done, sleep, and then wake up and do it all over again.
Some days are easier, of course. There are things to look forward to. A trip. Dinner with someone. A package arriving. A good film I’ve been meaning to watch. Even something as small as knowing there is good food in the fridge can make a day feel slightly better. Other times, though, the days just seem to run into each other. Monday becomes Friday, another month ends, and suddenly you are wondering where all that time went.
I used to think that perhaps this feeling meant something was missing. Maybe I wasn’t doing enough. Maybe I needed a new goal, a new place to go, something exciting to work toward. We are always being told to find our purpose, after all. To dream bigger. To make something of ourselves. There is almost a pressure to wake up every morning feeling grateful and motivated and excited to be alive.
But nobody feels that way every day.
At least I don’t.
Sometimes I am simply here.
And I am learning that perhaps there is nothing particularly wrong with that.
Life cannot always be exciting. It cannot always be moving toward some wonderful thing. There are going to be long stretches when nothing much happens, when the days are ordinary and you are ordinary in them. You make your coffee. You answer a few messages. You go somewhere, come home, take a shower, lie in bed. You talk about what to have for dinner. You complain about the weather. You watch something you have already seen because you don’t feel like choosing anything new.
It sounds terribly uneventful when written down.
And yet, when I think about the things I miss, many of them are exactly like this.
I miss ordinary days from years ago that I did not know were worth remembering while I was living them. I miss sitting somewhere with people I used to see all the time. I miss places that once felt so familiar I barely looked at them. I miss versions of my life that, back then, I was probably impatient to move on from.
It is strange how that happens.
You spend so much of your life waiting for something else. Waiting to finish school. Waiting to get the job. Waiting to earn more money. Waiting for the weekend. Waiting for a holiday. Waiting to fall in love, or to get over someone, or to finally become the person you imagine yourself becoming. Then one day you look back and realize that all that waiting was your life, too.
Perhaps that is what I forget whenever everything starts to feel pointless.
I keep expecting life to explain itself to me.
I want to know where things are going. I want to know that what I am doing now will matter later. I want some assurance that the things that did not work out were making room for better things, that the difficult years taught me something, that every wrong turn eventually leads somewhere worthwhile.
But maybe some things don’t.
Maybe some things happen and that is all.
Maybe there are days that will not change us. Maybe there are years we will not look back on as particularly important. Maybe not every disappointment comes with a lesson attached to it, and not everything we lose is replaced by something better.
Oddly, I find that thought comforting.
It takes some pressure off life.
It means I don’t have to turn every experience into something. I don’t have to find the lesson immediately. I don’t have to convince myself that everything happens for a reason just so I can feel better about what happened. And I don’t have to wake up each morning knowing exactly what I am living for.
Some mornings, getting through the day is enough.
There are small things that help.
A cup of coffee made exactly the way I like it. Clean sheets. A long shower. Driving with nowhere urgent to be. Hearing an old song and remembering exactly who I was when I first loved it. A message from someone I haven’t heard from in a while. The first few minutes after rain when everything outside smells different. Laughing so hard at something completely stupid that, for a moment, nothing else matters.
None of these things answers the question.
Maybe that is the point.
Maybe we don’t go on because we have finally figured out why we should. Maybe most of us go on because there is always something small pulling us into the next day.
Sometimes it is a person.
Sometimes it is a responsibility.
Sometimes it is a plan we made weeks ago and almost forgot about.
And sometimes it is nothing more profound than wanting to know what happens next.
I think that is enough for me.
I don’t know what my life will look like five years from now. There are things I want, certainly, but I have lived long enough to know that wanting something does not mean it will happen, and not getting something does not necessarily mean something better is waiting around the corner. Life is less tidy than the stories we tell about it afterward.
Still, I want to see.
I want to know what my ordinary days will look like then. What I will care about. Who will still be around. What will make me laugh. What I will have stopped worrying about. What I will wish I had worried about less.
Maybe that is how you go on when everything feels pointless.
You don’t solve your whole life.
You just stay long enough to see it change.
Because it will. Quietly, slowly, sometimes without you noticing. A season ends. Someone enters your life. Someone leaves it. You find a new favorite place. You hear good news. You survive bad news. Something you once desperately wanted stops mattering. Something you never planned for becomes important to you.
And one morning, perhaps nothing extraordinary will happen at all.
You will wake up. The light will come through the window. You will think about breakfast. There will be things to do.
And for reasons you cannot quite explain, the day will not feel quite so pointless anymore.