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The worst part about adulthood is the rude awakening that follows.

I’m not talking about the influx of responsibilities that hit you like a freight train, or everything you once thought to be a distant future away suddenly rising up to body-slam you like a three-hundred pound Grand Slam champion out for blood, or even the existential dismay of having to come up with something new and inventive to cook every single day.

Like twice.

And like it’s everyday.

But no. It’s the moment when you realize that the parents you’ve looked to for all the answers your whole life don’t know what the f*ck they’re doing any more than you do.

The moment when you realize adulthood is just a whole lot of pretending.

The Facebook quotes and novelty mugs were right.

Fake it till you make it is actually the quintessential philosophy, the unsung underdog that curls and snarls under our beds.

It’s a sobering pill of truth and a rite of passage, but the revelations that followed this epiphany were not pleasant for me.

Epistemological philosophers have been agonizing over it for centuries, but the question stays immune to the vagaries of time: what now?

When your life stops being planned for you, when you’ve hit all the milestones: go to school, get good grades, go to college, get a job — where do you go next?

Is it really up to me to find my own success in the world?

Am I equipped to take charge of my own life?

When the time comes, will I be able to act? Or am I expected to act every day until something just…magically clicks?

Will everything fall into place then?

Do I get to rub my chin in the aftermath and soliloquize about how I finally discovered the grand purpose of my life?

Fat chance.

As someone who can’t stick to any one niche to save my life with whims that flicker and sputter everyday based on the last successful person next to me or the next talented stranger on my feed, I quickly became convinced that there’s no point to anything.

One moment I think I’m on the right track, and the next I want to learn to play the violin or become a voice actor or go to a coding camp or lock myself up in my bedroom for six months straight in hopes I’ll get a novel out before the cabin fever sets in.

I think of Plato’s Cave, and not just because of this idea that someone who can’t perceive the larger world can’t possibly seek to demand more of it.

In fact, the opposite is true today.

We exist in a time where we get to play witness to every act of human triumph and tragedy in liquid pixels.

No, the cave comes to mind because I felt quite like the allegorical prisoner chained.

I used to imagine myself fumbling blindfolded through a dark, sinuous cave that yawned out into oblivion, but I had no idea where I was going, or why.

I couldn’t decide if there was a destination; some great isle of fulfillment at the other side of the cave that I was hoping to reach; couldn’t decide if I was stumbling around in the dark because I was striding towards my purpose or just because I’d already been pushed into the cave.

Well, I’m already walking. Guess I should just keep going in hopes of…

What?

Is it up to us to make our lives meaningful, to discern some greater reason in why we do what we do?

Man’s pursuit of meaning is immortalized in our inability to grasp it.

If I cannot assign meaning to my daily tasks, to commuting to work or brushing my teeth on a boring weekday night or dragging myself to the gym, if I cannot see my larger picture in this series of small acts, should I be motivated to act at all?

I was a difficult kid. I needed twice the encouragement, Pavlovian conditioning just to pull myself up and put one foot in front of the other, and that kid in me still leaves tasks for the last minute.

I work well under pressure and get to boast a real solid job interview weakness, that I thrive when a deadline has me on a short leash.

So I became convinced: if I can’t find a meaningful narrative, of course I’m going to turn to procrastination and instant gratification and self-soothing.

How am I supposed to stand knowing that most of us won’t do anything meaningful with our lives?

Why should I sweat and lose sleep and struggle, when there might be nothing at the end of the cave?

Just like our philosophers of old, I don’t have the answers.

What I’ve come to tell myself in order to cope is that it’s all as meaningful as we want it to be–and not just the hard parts.

I can make this cup of tea meaningful. I can spend four hours straight in bed and call it a meaningful rest.

To quote one of my favorite cozy games (VA-11 Hall-A Cyberpunk Bartender), I could wake up tomorrow and decide, “today my origin story ends and my actual narrative begins.”

Even if you don’t believe it, there’s comfort in that.

Life is far from a straight line or a summit to conquer.

Maybe we’re all Sisyphus rolling the boulder, but maybe there’s worth, even when you’re falling backwards and having to start all over again.

It may not be momentum but you’re still moving. And if you’re still moving, you may as well act.

There are still days I wish I could uncover some sort of grand objective for my life that’ll reveal it all.

That suddenly, in that flash of epiphany, everything will make sense.

But in all my waiting for some sort of lever to come along and spring me into action, I’ve realized something. I can’t seek a propeller, or that satisfying end-of-the-movie moment where our dejected hero, suddenly enlightened by someone or something, makes his mad dash towards his goal.

I don’t need a grand reason to act.

Maybe I’ll try and fail and nothing will come of anything that I do.

Maybe I’ll act anyway.