How to Have an Existential Crisis 

I turned 30 at the precipice of the pandemic. Like many that aged before and many since, I sat myself in front of a blank sheet of paper and attempted to answer one of life’s eternally mythical questions; what does it feel like to reach the third floor? To be honest, I always thought of the fuss around it as a purposeless social construct. However, it’s a generally accepted bookmark for the cusp of true adulthood so I decided to indulge it. Besides, by that age, Jesus was walking on water and Mzee had decided that Uganda needed liberation so one would argue that by now, you should have a pretty good grasp on the prerequisites for a meaningful adult life.

At first attempt, it all looked grim. From the looks of things, I wasn’t where I thought I’d be at this juncture in my life. There are few things with a more innate ability to make you feel inadequate than a checklist populated with red key performance indicators. But then again it all felt a bit nuanced. The answers seemed to be layered and the questions seemed to pose more questions. So, after several attempts, I decided to dig a little deeper. I set out on a journey of introspection. My existence surely couldn’t just be a summary of failed KPI bullet points. The problem is I always forget how slippery the paths of a turbulent mind are. What I thought was a rabbit hole of a self-reflection, turned out to be a sinkhole, and before I knew it, I was viciously washing down a storm drain with all of the earth’s filth.What started as a stock take activity, turned into a whole referendum on the meaning in life.

So, somewhere in my consciousness, I found myself in this whimsical dystopia, an externalisation of my state of mind. It was a flat tropical expanse mostly populated by big trunked hardwood trees. The ground was muddy, and it was littered with freshly blown leaves and rays of sunlight piercing through the trees’ canopy. It looked like a storm had just passed. The leaves crunched under every stride I made as I tried to familiarize with my surrounding. I soon found myself along a well-manicured path, which I walked briskly until I stumbled into a cul de sac at the end of which was a roadblock. Now, usually in Kampala, to go through a roadblock, sliding the police officer a 20k for soda would suffice but this was not that kind of party. My knees buckled and I sat down on the ground with little care for soiling my pants. Still unclear about this manifestation, I looked around. You know how Ugandans like writing on toilet walls? The words I was here were signed and chiseled into the barks of all the trees around the culde sac. I looked on the ground and I could see footprints leading back down the path I’d come. I didn’t know quite how to navigate from here. Every indication showed that this was a road travelled by many but concurred by few. A boulevard of broken dreams so to speak. I was about to resign myself to the same fate, and then it landed on my lap like a stripper.

See, the average Joe has no time for this ideological nonsense. This sort of scrutiny of self. Life is already hard as it is without putting it under a microscope to understand its intricacies, intricacies like the true definition of a meaningfulness. We mischaracterize it as happiness, righteousness or rightness, being well or a state of well-being. We mistakenly use these pseudo-meanings as a compass to guide the true north of our experience and build fortresses with itemized compartments where we store all the sensibilities born out of these experiences. Its these experiences that inadvertently shape us. So, when we stare down the end of a decade like this, it’s often a disheartening exercise because that’s when we see the inevitable misalignment. That’s the source of all this cognitive dissonance. That was the roadblock.

But when you look deeper, it becomes clear that true meaningfulness is logically distinct from happiness and the like. True meaningfulness in life comes from seeking a higher sense of self that transcends your pervasive animal instinct. It comes from seeking understanding and being understood, it comes from benefit-able relationships, creativity, all tied together in a bouquet of overlapping sensibilities. That’s what landed on my lap. The realisation that I had the solution in those compartments.

In there, is the very essence of who you are. In there, is every single outcome you’ve taken as a lesson, woven into the fabric of your identity. In there, is your inborn capacity for a meaningful life. Whatever your definition of meaningfulness, it’s a function of exercising that capacity and that capacity is in those compartments. Ultimately, I came to the conclusion that you need to be actively aware of your sense of self beyond the limited confines of the current state of your being. It will determine whether the items in those compartments manifest as weapons or as tools to help you live a full life.

So, with a big smile on my face, I turned and walked back with a renewed confidence in the human condition and the purpose of things. What I’d thought was a roadblock turned out to be a sign in the form of a gigantic office locker and it dawned on me more and more that the footprints leading back, were of people enlightened as I was.

Meanwhile, through all this, there was a chatty cartoon in my head voiced by a nosy uncle who growing up only visited my parents when he wanted a handout. He kept telling me how a real man’s fulfilment comes from selflessness and sacrifice. I told him to shut the fuck up.