Lack of specific needs and wants makes my world feel meaningless

By David McElroy · February 7, 2021

The world is out of focus for me tonight. It’s fuzzy. Unclear. Like looking through a camera lens that’s covered with raindrops.

The problem isn’t the world. The problem is in my head. Or in my heart. It’s hard to say. I just know I’m the problem. The world is still just as dysfunctional as ever, but it’s no different than it always is. The change is in me.

I didn’t enjoy dinner tonight. I didn’t enjoy the company I had. There was nothing wrong with the food. There was nothing wrong with the woman with whom I ate. But nothing felt right. Everything felt wrong.

I don’t know what I want.

There’s an empty feeling gnawing at me. I want something, but what? My life has always been centered around the answers to these questions. What do I want? What do I need? What am I trying to accomplish? Whose love am I trying to win? And now?

I don’t know what I want.

After I left dinner and dropped off my dinner companion, the vague feeling of emptiness caused me to stop at a grocery store. I’d feel better if I could get something to make me happy.

The store had every snack choice under the sun. Ice cream. Lemon pies. Chocolate pies. Potato chips. Doughnuts. Cakes. Popcorn. Pastries.

I wandered down aisles and looked at dozens of things which have tasted good to me. Things which have satisfied me — to one extent or another — in the past. But it all might as well have been made of sand or straw.

Nothing sounded good. Helpful employees asked if they could help me find anything, but I couldn’t tell them anything I was looking for.

I don’t know what I want.

Standing in the middle of the frozen desserts aisle, I suddenly realized that what I wanted more than anything else was to want something. To need something. To know what I wanted.

To desperately want something I can’t have is awful, but I can have hope when I feel that way. If I want a particular woman’s love, I can hold out hope that she will love me and choose me.

If I want to earn some material prize, I can imagine what it’s like to have it. I can think about how to go about chasing it.

If I want some particular achievement, I can dream about what it will feel like. I can plan and scheme about how to make it happen.

But tonight, there’s nothing in particular which I can say would make me happy or joyful or fulfilled. My world has been trending in that direction for a long while. Maybe weeks, maybe months, maybe even years. And I don’t quite know how to deal with it. I don’t know how to live with the emptiness of not having something specific that I need.

My long-term mood lately is summed up in a lyric from a very old Steve Taylor song: “Life’s too short for small talk, so don’t be talking trivia now. Excess baggage fills this plane. There’s more than we should ever allow.”

I’m distracted by the feeling that everything I’m doing in my life now is trivia and that everything in my life feels like “excess baggage.” I’ve never felt as urgent about finding purpose and meaning and love and all the things that seem important to me — because I have none of those.

I’m incredibly impatient with everything that our culture sees as important or worthwhile in life. This has been true for a long time, but it feels more urgent than ever. It just seems as though I’m seeing the sand run through the hourglass of my life too quickly — and I’m desperate for the meaning that’s still missing.

I am more convinced than ever that love and connection and meaning and beauty are at the center of what is missing in my life, but I have no idea how to find the missing pieces — much less what I should be doing with myself to find the meaningful pieces that are missing.

I don’t know what I want. I don’t know what I need.

When I was young, I wanted success and money and fame and power. I wanted much that our society teaches us is important. I can’t pretend that it wouldn’t be nice to have some of those things — just for material comfort’s sake — but I’m painfully aware that having an unlimited amount of money and success wouldn’t change what I’m feeling right now.

I grew up learning how to play the same game that all of American culture is playing, but I’ve rejected that game — even though I haven’t figured out what game I’m trying to play instead. I can name aspects that are connected to the “game” I want to play — those things such as love, connection, meaning, beauty, creation — but I don’t understand what it all adds up to.

For the first time in my life, I’d rather live like a monk doing something that feeds my soul — whatever that might be — than to become wealthy doing things which don’t matter to me, as I’m doing today. It feels to me as though it’s a matter of life and death.

I feel as though finding meaning is my way to live but continuing to do things the “normal” way of my culture is death. And with each passing year, I feel as though I’m running out of time. This terrifies me.

I feel as though I can still do pretty much anything I need to do. I haven’t lost any of the abilities I’ve ever had. But without some goals — without specific things to want and need — my abilities and drives are useless.

I want something to want. Something to need.

I want someone to love. Someone to sacrifice for. Someone who shares my vision of what we’re trying to achieve in the world.

I want a purpose again. I want something that matters enough to get me up in the morning. I don’t care about the outward indicators of success or wealth. I just want something that’s so meaningful I’m excited to pursue it every day.

I used to know who I wanted. I used to know what I thought I was trying to accomplish. I used to know which things were worth sacrificing for.

But I don’t know what I want anymore — what I need anymore — and that makes my world tonight feel bleak and unfocused and meaningless. And that’s slowly killing me inside, even thought I look perfectly fine to an outside observer.

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Have you ever wondered how the social media world works for so-called “influencers”? I find it comical, so I thought I’d share with you. I frequently get offers such as what I’m about to describe. And if I’m getting such offers — as a relative nobody in the online world — you can only imagine what people with huge audiences are offered. It starts with an email appealing to my ego: “We came across your online presence and we LOVE your style. We’d love to have you as one of our Brand Ambassadors. To celebrate our new [Brand Name] collection, we want to give you a FREE Watch so you can post a picture of you wearing it and drive more exposure to our brand.” Did you hear that? They love me. They want me to be seen wearing their cheap $59 watch so other people will think, “If this amazing influencer wears that, surely I should buy one.” They even offer me commissions on the watches sold from people clicking from my site. So the next time you see some alleged “influencer” touting something online or on social media, remember that this is what it’s probably all about. It’s laughable.

Modern culture is going insane. The latest evidence comes from the effort to redefine children’s author Dr. Seuss as a racist whose books should be banned. Why? Because a few images in those books don’t meet modern political standards. The drawing you see here is one of those “dangerously racist images,” and it comes from the Dr. Seuss classic, “And to Think That I Saw it on Mulberry Street.” The book catalogs all the wild diversity seen by a child on one street, including the offending drawing of a Chinese boy. What’s racist about it? Apparently, it was racist to show the boy eating rice, wearing a funny hat, using chopsticks and (worst of all) having eyes represented by a slit. (The bearded man near him has dots for eyes, but that’s apparently OK.) In other words, the stereotypes are considered racist today. (Oddly, the culture warriors who fret over such things are never concerned if a white southerner is depicted as ignorant trash living in a trailer. Some stereotypes are great, especially if the left hates those people anyway.) Theodore Geisel — the name of the real-life Dr. Seuss — was a product of his time and nobody at that time would have seen any of this as racist. Using stereotypes and exaggerations is how artists depict differences in simple ways. You can argue that it’s better to achieve the end result in a different way, but it’s insane to pretend that everybody from the past should have his work erased because it doesn’t match the preferences of modern leftists. Unfortunately, the company that publishes Dr. Seuss books has caved to the insane people — and six of his popular works will no longer be published. The world has simply gone insane.

Tyler Barnes will never be a basketball star. He probably peaked as a star high school player in Louisville, Ky. But for the last four years, he’s been a walk-on player for the University of Alabama. He’s a chemical engineering major with lots of academic honors who rides the bench because he loves being part of a team. He sometimes gets into games with a minute or two to go, but only if Alabama has a big lead. This Saturday, it was senior day for Alabama basketball, so it was his last chance to play in Coleman Coliseum. Alabama Coach Nate Oats says that one of the team starter’s came to him an hour before the game started — and fellow senior Alex Reese asked Oats if Barnes could start in his place for this one game. Even though the game was huge for Alabama, which is ranked No. 6 in the country and trying to wrap up an SEC title, Oats agreed. Barnes started and played the first three minutes, grabbing what was only the fourth rebound of his career and missing his only shot. Barnes has a great future as an engineer, but you’ll never again hear from him as a basketball player. For three shining minutes Saturday, though, he was a starter for a top-10 college basketball team — and his parents were in the stands from Kentucky to see it. There’s a lot of ugliness in college basketball right now, but this story makes me happy.

It was five years ago tonight when Lucy first rode in the car with me. She was on her way to her “forever home” with me that night, but she didn’t know it, so she was terrified. It was a much happier and braver girl who took a ride in the car tonight so we could go through a drive-through window and order a hamburger for her — to celebrate five years with me. She had a great time. If she could remember five years ago tonight, she would be proud of how far she’s come, too. If you’d like to know more about Lucy’s journey from scared dog to brave queen of the household, here’s something I wrote after her first year with me. I’m hoping this girl will have many more happy years with me.

I’ve never been attracted to skinny women. There’s nothing wrong with someone who’s naturally thin, but it’s never been my preference. What has shocked me, though, is the judgment I’ve heard from women all through my life — about themselves and others — about who’s “fat.” I concluded long ago that most women in our culture have been brainwashed to believe that skinny is attractive — and that anything other than skinny is ugly. I first assumed that I was the oddball — for preferring women with bigger and heavier bodies — but I’m coming to the conclusion that most men naturally feel this way to one extent or another. I just ran across new research by a couple of Northwestern University psychology professors that shows that women seriously overestimate how much a straight man will be attracted to a skinny woman. In a perfect world, we would all be at a healthy weight, but when it comes to attractiveness, too heavy is more attractive than skinny. At least to me — and to a lot of men, too.

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