53: Steps towards despair: burdening the world

My Weltschmerz, or my oppressive Weltanschauung (or depression, or melancholy, or pessimism, or whatever we want to call it) began early in life. As I try to remember just how early, it becomes difficult. Apparently I am genetically predisposed to melancholy. Apparently I was a very difficult child, sleeping very little and crying a lot.

This sleeplessness followed me my whole life and may have a lot to do with depressing me. You start developing a dim view of life if you never feel like you've slept enough. If rest is your most treasured and most elusive goal, you start despising your waking moments, and from there it is not such a large step to despising your living moments and wishing for a deeper, more lasting sleep.

But the question of purpose haunted me as well. I remember asking my dad why we are alive, and not finding any answer to be satisfying. I don't recall at what age I started asking, but I know it was long before my teens. It struck me that a God who would consider the human race to be a worthwhile project must have a strong sense of slapstick and some sadistic tendencies as well. But I didn't say this out loud.

I figured if I wasn't given any direct understanding of why I existed, I might as well try to leave the world a better place than I had found it. I guess you need to have some sort of purpose, and you could do worse than making this your purpose. It sounds so noble.

The problem, as I saw it, was that my very existence was putting a burden on the world, making it worse instead of better. This meant I would first have to undo the bad I was doing, and then do some good in addition. Implicitly, it also meant that everyone would be better off if I had not even been born.

Even though you can manipulate your thinking and distract yourself from it, it is only a matter of time before your thoughts reach their logical conclusions. And while I may have had my strain of melancholy all my life, the youthful optimism which once had counterbalanced it wore thinner and thinner until all that was left was the despair. Simply because I had been born, I was a burden to the human race, to all life in my planet, and to God.