Nihilistic pessimism
and rationalistic optimism
fail in their effort to juggle away
the bitter truth of sacrifice:
they also eliminate all reasons for wanting it.

Someone told a young invalid who wept because she had to leave her home, her occupations, and her whole past life, “Get cured. The rest has no importance.” “But if nothing has any importance,” she answered, “what good is it to get cured?”

She was right.

In order for the world to have any importance,
in order for our undertaking to have a meaning
and to be worthy of sacrifices,
we must affirm the concrete
and particular thicknesses of this world
and the individual reality of our projects and ourselves.

-excerpt The Ethics of Ambiguity by Simone de Beauvoir p. 114

---

Today I am concerned with the preparation for a medical procedure which is scheduled for tomorrow morning.  It is necessary to suffer discomfort to allow the Doctor to make the best diagnosis possible.  Is a day of sacrifice worth it?  According to words written by de Beauvoir it depends on the worth of the rest of my life, and the value which I place on my projects, all of which depend upon my continued good health.  Is a day of discomfort a fair exchange?  Is the sacrifice thereby justified?  The question is one that I alone must ask and answer for myself.  For what reason do I want this sacrifice?

I live in a time that is cluttered with a surplus of advertising, with more entertainment than one could possibly consume, and with shrill demands for fidelity to a political cause.  The space, and the interlude of time necessary for asking: “What in this word do I care about enough to sacrifice myself?” is pushed to the bare margins of my consciousness.  There’s hardly enough time, enough left-over-space for entertaining the question.

Am I to just keep buying more stuff, as the Amazon delivery van with smiling logo drives away yet again…  Or amusing myself with the bottomless well of content on social media, or streaming on  the big screen…  Capitalism is nothing if not a rational, and ever optimistic appeal to infinitely consume. 

The political on the other hand is something which I hardly can bear to write about.  An end-of-days scenario is concocted and believers are invited to participate in the final battle, their own Armageddon.  Nihilism in spades.

Should not ‘the question’ be at the center of awareness?