White Whale, Black Abyss
I remember a time right before my graduation, I remember having a panic attack at the prospect of not knowing what I'd be doing now that this phase of my life was over. I had dedicated a lot of mental energy, almost all of it in fact, to the search for Truth in Economics.
I had delved deep not just in the textbooks, but felt compelled to dig deeper into the philosophical foundations of the subject. How valid are the assumptions? Are the methodologies really that robust in principle? In the end I felt like I was pulling on a thread and the beautiful tapestry that lulled me away from a career slowly came undone before my eyes.
That was an existential crisis. Out of this acute distress however I had made a discovery, called Complexity Science. Here, I seemed to find answers, or at least very compelling ideas - ideas so powerful that reading them made me feel physically sick. Don't ask me why my body had this reaction to a most wonderful experience, I have no clue.
Thus began another journey down a rabbit hole which ended with a dissertation I'm very proud of (partly because it is the first one of its kind but mostly because I'm genuinely proud of it in itself, apart from me).
Yet here, outside the library the feeling of dread slowly and surely hijacked my mind. I had no contacts. I had shunned socialising with classmates. I was on a Mission and did not want to be distracted (I was a mature student so the age gap may have played some role). Now however I was staring at the abyss.
What the fuck am I going to do? Nobody cares about Complexity. They care about Cost Benefit Analysis. I just spent years ripping it apart in my own head and besides, after discovering Complexity I decided to just study enough to earn a passing grade in the rest of my subjects. That did not look good on my transcript.
If I don't get a good job my girlfriend will leave me. I won't be able to do anything a normal person is expected to do. Out of despair, I asked to meet a professor but he could not meet on that day. I was grasping at straws, I was having a panic attack.
It's funny how life proceeds. Here I am now, some seven years later with a pretty good job. My girlfriend became fiance, my fiance became my ex, my ex became a hazy complex of memories. Much ado and all that.
I don't really know why I'm recalling all this now, seven years later on a crisp Tuesday morning. I suppose that Frankl's words have me thinking back to times when I was fully engaged in a mission. Perhaps to the same degree Ahab was with Moby Dick, for better or worse.
I wonder what Ahab would've done if he killed the White Whale without much trouble and returned home and found himself working as an executive in a shipping company?
