Tuesday, September 08, 2009

half life crisis (which doesn't augur well for my longevity)

one of the really key problems with being 24 is that suicide isn't really a very viable option. I feel much too old to suffer any sort of authentic existential angst that would lead to trying something ambitiously melodramatic, i.e., writing a hand-written note filled with words like "empathy" and then popping off with plenty of blood for maximal impact just doesn't appeal to me anymore the way it once did.

On the other hand, I also feel much too young to be weighed down by anything Really Serious. I have had no major addiction issues, messy break-ups(technically speaking), crushingly disappointing children, deaths in the family or been clinically depressed in the formal sense of the term. I do feel fat and ugly most of the time, but this does not appear to constitute - as yet, I hasten to add - a particularly weighty point in my life-taking considerations.

Granted, my work and career (and bank account) are disappointments, and are likely to remain largely inglorious even in the medium run. Finance theory would suggest, within a reasonable confidence interval, that going on like this could possibly be lower NPV (Net Present Value) compared to the expected value of pulling the plug and starting off afresh in the next life(ignoring, in the very best tradition of the greatest economists, any difficult questions regarding bounded rationality [how does one, for example, estimate the probabilities required to calculate aforementioned expected value without knowing one's actions in all of one's previous lives, assuming of course that Hindu philosophy and karma are largely correct], the time of occurence of the next rebirth, the nature of time itself, etc etc).

Clearly, I am losing my mind.

(Come to think of it, that last statement brings into the suicide equation a whole Catch-22 [you know, "mad" people, not wanting to fly and so on] dynamic that further complicates things and calls for mixed Nash equilibria that I just don't feel like estimating at the moment)

I hate this. Go away.

3 comments:

Refuge said...

I am fairly certain that blowing one's brains out would generate some rather unadvantageous karma, thus leading to a bug rebirth (or something similarly inglorious). While being completely (and gratefully) untrained in economics, I can't be a hundred percent sure, but I would assume that might mess up your NPV and whatnot.

melon collie said...

you are right. as ever.

Anonymous said...

write more please.

About Me

a recluse waiting for salvation