Feeling Pointless?

Feeling Pointless

Hello, and how are you? Here is a blog I wrote a few years ago, but never posted (perhaps because it was too ‘raw’ at the time). Hoping it helps someone.

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I have been struggling this week with the feeling that I am, to be frank, fairly pointless. This is something that has dogged me throughout my life, as I have never managed to motivate myself when things seem pointless. ‘Where is the point,’ said my 16-year-old self, ‘of learning French, when I cannot afford to ever leave the country?’ If I couldn’t see the worth—the point—of something, then I didn’t do it. To feel that one’s self is pointless is therefore bit of a problem, and not one that is easily solved.
My children have all grown up, they have independent lives and have studied things I don’t understand and all work in offices (whereas I only know classrooms) so their conversation is smattered with words like sprints and neds and nids, and difs and dofs (okay, I made up the last ones, but you get the idea?) I feel left behind, a little bit stupid, and really rather pointless.

There have been times in my life when I felt like I mattered too much. A working mother, with a husband who was always in the city and three young children and a house to cope with, life was so busy I didn’t have time to wonder whether I was pointless, I just had to make it through the day. Perhaps therefore this introspective issue is one reserved for people with too much undirected time. Perhaps busy people don’t stop to wonder. (Perhaps they should.)

I am at a ‘funny age for a woman’ so some of my feelings might be due to hormones rather than actual fact, but I see it in other people too. I look at what I have achieved in my life, and feel that it is all finishing, and I am left with nothing to do that’s worth doing, and I don’t want to be that frivolous person who has hobbies. I want to be up there, with the nurses in casualty, with the politicians making decisions, with the artist who produces something that affects people. I want to matter.

I suspect that lots of people felt pointless during the time of lockdown. Many people were stuck in their homes, possibly furloughed from work, not able to use their skills and talents. We feel pointless, we need to feel that what we do, our lives, has some worth. And sometimes, frankly, they don’t.

This is a problem that I also see with older people. As people approach the end of their life, when their body doesn’t quite manage to do all the things it used to do, when they can no longer be the person who goes up the ladder to fix the light, or carries the shopping, or caters for the crowd, then they start to feel a bit pointless. When the time comes to stop driving, it hits even harder. If you can’t do things, then what is the point of living? I hear this voiced (in different words) by people suffering a major illness. If you’re in so much pain that you can’t function, then what is the point? Why not end it now?

Even busy people actually, are fairly pointless. They work hard, they strive for wealth—but they never have time to enjoy it; or they want to be promoted to positions of power—but after a while someone else takes over and they retire and it was all for nothing. It is like chasing the wind. There is no point, not really. You work hard, you earn security, and then you die and someone who hasn’t worked, who doesn’t deserve it, enjoys everything you have achieved. So, why bother?

Before you all go and throw yourselves under a bus, I have a few thoughts.

I think that actually, on our own, we are all pointless. Time passes very quickly, and you will grow old, and lose your abilities, and die, and in a few decades you will probably be forgotten. So, as the writer of Ecclesiastes wrote, you should find work that you enjoy, and make the most of the life that you have.

We were all created for a purpose, and I believe that even more strongly than my feelings of despondency. Therefore there is a plan for my life, and if I manage to follow that plan, then my life will not be pointless, it will be part of a whole wonderful eternal plan. Which is what I want, need, long for. And this, in case you were wondering, is why I am a Christian. I want to be on God’s side, because he is eternal; following him is not like chasing the wind, and he gives my life meaning now, and will give my life meaning when I’m older. I might not see the whole plan now, some things will only be clear with hindsight, when I look back; sometimes I might lose sight of the plan altogether and wander off a bit. But if I keep trying to follow God, to every day ask him to guide me along the right path, then what I am will be worthwhile. My life is a tiny, but useful, essential, part of the whole. And that is worth living for.

Thank you for reading. Take care.
Love, Anne x

PS. When I initially wrote this, after a few days of absolutely everything going wrong, plus it being my dad’s birthday and I always miss him on his birthday, I had a mini explosion and told my family how I was feeling. They were all super-supportive, and I received flowers and loving messages and felt thoroughly loved (and a little guilty for having exploded). If you are feeling pointless, perhaps you should be brave enough to tell someone close to you. It might help.