I’ve been asking myself recently, “How can you give the world to someone who doesn’t have a clue what they want?” I often get daydreams of becoming unfathomably wealthy and spoiling my friends, taking away all of their financial needs and then some, and leaving them all completely without want. Sure, you can do direct material things, like paying debts or settling all of their financial worries.

However, although I could seemingly purchase security, true happiness is the result of far more than just security. To be happy, I think people need security, fulfillment, and purpose, at the very least. Most people seem to manage to get only one of those things at best, let alone getting all three. For this reason, money doesn’t buy happiness. It only covers a third of the puzzle. Even with all of the money in the world, there could seemingly be nothing I could do to make someone with no idea of what it is that they want out of being alive happy. I think, in this way, a lot of people are unhappy. Not only is it bad enough to locate financial security in our highly financially inequitable society while simultaneously increasingly difficult to form healthy social connections necessary for fulfillment in this increasingly-online world, but also, even if both facets of your life are completed, lacking a strong purpose will always leave you empty.

However, I empathize with those that are lost or indecisive. For many, I don’t think its an issue of indecision per se, but moreso, an issue of perspective. For many people, the reason why they feel lost isn’t an abundance of possible paths to take, but rather, a feeling of being stuck with no paths. What horrifies me, though, is that this feeling of being “stuck” is by no means an objective reality for many people. In simpler terms, being “stuck” is more a state of mind than it is an actual state of being. Many people feel “stuck” from incredibly young ages, such as six or seven. Most start to really feel “stuck” upon graduating high school. This age, this terrible, terrible age, of eighteen to our mid-twenties is like feeling the cold-turkey withdrawals after being forcefully drugged-up throughout the schooling system, with every decision made for you and the development of skills of independence and self-determination intentionally avoided, and then subsequently told to leave immediately on graduation with no direction or purpose.

Naturally, most people, then, just do whatever their peers choose or whatever the authorities in their life tell them to do. It only makes sense: following along is the only thing they’ve known up until that point, and this gullibility and desperation for orders makes us so susceptible to being quickly exploited for all manner of things. Many people turn to higher education simply because it’s just the thing to do, but without any real understanding of why they’re there, and they often take out hefty loans for such degrees that they know they have no interest in using beyond getting a job. Alternatively, many people join the military, signing on to multi-year contracts of militarial slavery in a kind of indentured servitude to the military-industrial complex on the false promise that joining the armed forces will supply you with a purpose in life. I suppose this is a topic for a post on its own, but its entirely ludicrous to think that the military, especialy active combat, will supply you with anything other than lifelong injuries, both physical and mental.

So, then, where do you go? What are you supposed to do? At the age of eighteen, on the precipice of adulthood, how does anybody know where to go or what to do? How is it that everybody but you seems to know exactly what to do with their lives?

Well, for you, dear reader, I don’t have the answer to that question. I don’t have the answer to that question myself. What I do know, however, is that there is a fundamental problem with the assumption that everyone else seem to “have it together” or that other people even can tell you what you “should” be doing at your age, and this is because I don’t believe anyone, at any age, really consciously knows what it is they “should” be doing. I think it’s a big assumption to assume that anybody in the world really truly knows what they are doing, because it is entirely not necessary for anybody to know what they are doing to live happy, fulfilling lives as individuals or for society at large to function. Politicians and self-help coaches and religious leaders and such will parade around as though they have these answers, but just like with the nightmare of interconnection, perhaps nobody is “at the wheel of this bus.” On an individual scale, at least, someone at the wheel might not be necessary. As long as the bus is going somewhere without crashing, then unlike at a societal level, it’s okay. I think we’re all just figuring things out as we go along. Everyone is playing being alive by ear. I mean, unless you believe in reincarnation, this is everyone’s first times on this Earth. We’re all virgins to life and death.