Baby's first existential crisis

another dad blog

Do you remember the first time you realized the meaninglessness of life because I do. I was like three-years-old, sitting at the top of the stairs and I was trying to swallow this blank slate I’d been given. That whole ‘oh shit-congrats, you happen to be born a human being and you have free will but also pretty soon you’ll return to emptiness so oh well thanks for playing’

That’s about the best you can describe it, even if you did believe in some kind of structural god and afterlife. And we all have our origin stories but that’s generally how it ends up, isn’t it? You get these mini existential crises, black hole despairs and, to paraphrase Kierk, despair plays its games in the abyss. So you go through the games.

Anyway, I was a little kid sitting at the top of the stairs and losing my shit over the blank slate and my mom was rubbing my back and I remember that I was three. The stairs were carpeted brown and ugly and that’s where the memory stops.

Call it what you want, but I call it my first existential crisis and I tried to block those out.