Infinite Jest, Fight Club, and Tennis
“You are not your job, you're not how much money you have in the bank. You are not the car you drive. You're not the contents of your wallet. You are not your fucking khakis. You are all singing, all dancing crap of the world.”

Luck is finding something you didn't know you needed when you needed it the most.

Infinite Jest talks about the dry, monotone pace of adult life, how easy it is to live your life without making any real decisions, being a reflection of what others want you to do—a modern take on the question of free will and how people choose to spend their lives.

DFW talks about banal platitudes of life—take it day by day, stay positive, be thankful—and how they are important, even if no one knows how or why. Try to think too much about it and you might just end up like the man himself.

Fight Club is about a guy who has completely lost himself in a tug-of-war for free will to a desire for furniture, his corporate job, his money, and everything else that your average adult American can probably relate to. He's an insomniac, so he can't sleep. Some part of him probably realizes the problem with the way he's living his life. It's easy to stay up late watching youtube—eyes glued to screen, minimal brain effort, maximal brain stimulation. In the same way, it's hard to fall asleep when you've only watched yourself live through a day without being present. It's easy to just keep watching in 4K HD and shocking good touch, smell, and taste emulation the life of this person who is supposed to be you. It's like sitting in a big theater all by yourself, watching a film 24/7 of this person, unbeknownst that the film you are watching is really your own life.

What does living a worthwhile life mean? Depends on who you ask. Some would say they don't know. Actually, I bet most people would say that. There's really no objective answer. I've come to the conclusion long ago that there is no meaning of life. Coincidentally both Infinite Jest and Fight Club refer to this as your bottom—when you realize that nothing really matters in life. When you realize that you are free to do whatever the fuck you want to do.

It's scary to take responsibility for your actions. It's scary to have to live your life knowing that any fuck ups are your own fault. But what is even more scary is the idea of never putting yourself in a position to make mistakes in the first place. Because that means that you are not pursuing anything meaningful.

I am pretty confident at this point that the meaning of life is simply to minimize the amount of time you spend as a spectator of your own life.

Here's an analogy to tennis.

Imagine this scenario: You are having just an absolutely shit day. Balls are flying everywhere, you're dragging your feet, your confidence is shit. Would you rather keep playing? Or would you sit out and watch someone else play? Sure, playing is scary. Because you're playing like shit right now, and you're afraid you'll miss, you'll lose, people will think your bad, you'll think your bad, that you'll start to hate tennis and all the other shit that comes to mind sometimes on a tennis court.

But if you let someone else play, you'll never get what you want. You'll never get to improve, to win, to lose, to feel the emotions of playing tennis, to enjoy the game. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. But the best tennis players think about that a lot less than your average schmuck who plays tennis I bet. I imagine the strongest feeling they feel when they play a match is excitement.

The point of this tangent is that you should never be content with watching someone else play while you sit on the sidelines. Never be content with watching yourself live your life, as if you are incapable of having any form of control over your own actions and thoughts.

I bet understanding, believing, internalizing, and practicing this idea is 90% of what it takes to live a worthwhile life.