I’ve tried to avoid having get-togethers with my friends from college ¹. Am I anti-social? Maybe I am a little bit but the main reason for this distance is that I feel anxiety and stress just by thinking about the types of conversations that are going to occur.

You see, we all completed the same degree, which means that, until recently, our lives were mostly identical for 5 years (apart from the occasional Erasmus program). So I feel the need to compare my life to their lives, my successes to their successes, my life to their life. I know this is wrong, but when I see their achievements I can’t help but wonder if my lack thereof is my fault or fault of the choices I’ve made.

By having the same education for five years, it feels like we all set off from the same starting line, so anything they achieved, I should’ve also been able to achieve if I was smart enough (?), business savvy enough (?), courageous enough (?), etc. It also makes me wonder if I could’ve done more during those last five years. Would my life be better now if I did that summer internship? If I accepted that grant instead of the other one?

While all of this may have some degree of truth, even though most of it can be attributed to the entropy of human existence, should it matter? I think it shouldn’t. Saying that makes my attitude toward those dinners even more jarring, and my response is that the best way to make it not matter is to remove its existence from my life.

In general, I don’t like to talk about my life. This is because with talking about my life, questions (and not necessarily provocative ones) will arise, and they will make me doubt if I’m doing the right thing, if I took a wrong turn along the way, if I’m going down the stairs instead of going up…

Do I want to be an NPC? To live a life that is inconsequential because it’s shut off from the rest of existence. That seems to imply that life only makes sense if others are here to see it happen. My point is that being an NPC does the exact opposite. It makes life worth living just by the pleasure of life itself, without the feeling of needing to be a part of something larger, of receiving validation from others.

Something to think about. See you next week.