Giving Up Read Online Free Page B

waste their time chasing after a goal they could never be certain they would reach, who made a clear-eyed and deliberate decision to find a job or career that complemented their skills, talents, and character, and would allow for them to spend as much time as possible doing the things that they enjoy doing, these friends of mine, who I can hardly stand to be in the same room with, have all found that they actually enjoy the time they spend working. They have no problem going on about the pleasure they experience during their workday and confess that sometimes they don’t even feel like taking a break, they just want to keep working. They’re so absorbed in what they are doing that it doesn’t even occur to them to take a break. Despite the fact that I’ve made no secret about how much trouble I have reaching the level of concentration required for the sort of demanding and complex work that I do down in the basement, and regardless of the fact that I make no effort to hide the anguished expression on my face as I’m held hostage by their enthusiasm and genuine affection for the positions that they have ended up in as a result of practical convenience, they are seemingly devoid of sympathy for my situation and go on like this for the entire dinner or cocktail or coffee or whatever the premise is that we’ve decided to meet under. Everything I have done, every choice I have made, has been focused on creating a life for myself that is the exact opposite of the one I am currently living. When I am out with my so-called real friends, the people who have, like me, devoted themselves to some open-ended, laudable, and, in most cases, artistic goal, and who, unlike me, in almost every instance have enjoyed some measure of success (although for some this is only moderate success, whereas others have achieved extremely immoderate success), we sometimes talk about the lives of our friends who don’t live for the sake of their work but instead live for the weekend, or vacation, or their next big purchase, or simply for the health and contentment of their families – or at least this is what we imagine they live for. We talk about their lives and compare them to our own and the tone of our conversation vacillates between condescension and envy, respect and contempt, confusion and disdain, affection and apathy. It’s impossible for us to make up our minds on what we think it means to live a life without any animating goal or purpose , so as soon as one of us says, ‘I wish that I could forget about my work and just kick back and have a good time the way they do,’ someone else will say, ‘But they seem really unhappy to me. They’re always talking about their fucking car or their house or their kids as if they don’t know what else to say to people, which is what happens when all you do is relax all day.’ Or if someone says, ‘I just can’t imagine what it would be like to face down every fucking day knowing that they’re never going to change, just one day after the other without anything to really hold them together. You know what I mean?’ then someone will say something along the lines of, ‘I know what you mean, but I don’t think it’s like that for them. I think that they like their job and they like their wife or husband or whatever, and their kids or their pets, and they live in a good neighbourhood and they have some close friends that they like to hang out with and I don’t think it’s anymore complicated than that. I don’t think they see their life as just one damn thing after another, to them it’s just all about being as comfortable and safe as possible and that is what holds everything together for them.’ One of us may try to argue by saying something like, ‘Yeah, but what if you’re not comfortable? Then it must feel like everything you do is pointless?’ but it’s such a lame comeback that it’s