Did you decide to subordinate your existence to a way of life centered on having and being someone, allowing others to decide the course of your life, both private and public?
Did you follow to the letter what society and the establishment imposed, in terms of behavior, aspirations, and values?
Did you study this or that career to become someone, to get out of poverty?
Did you take care of, prioritize, and guide your behavior and relationships with certain people in order to get ahead?
Did you study and train in a career, profession, and trade based on the market and the future projection it offered?
If you are retired (retired and/or pensioned), did you enjoy what you did in your life, both professionally and privately, at work and for entertainment, to feed your mind and spirit - leisure?
Do you find it increasingly difficult to maintain your daily routine, or do you thank God every morning when you wake up for the life you have?
Is each new day a challenge for you, a new opportunity? Do you not give up in the face of difficulties, but find a way around them, solve them, adapt, and learn from them?
These answers could hold the key to a meaningful and happy life. They can reveal whether you've lived a fulfilling life or if, by default, you've been merely "killing time," just another face in the crowd.
The earthquake, the shock
Figuratively, the earthquake and the shock have been taken to represent the rupture of that normality or naturalness "killing time" of his external world, a disturbance and turbulence to which he has been exposed by an unexpected, contingent event, which shook his foundation, which took away his ladder and left him hanging by his paintbrush.
When has this happened to you?
It could be due to a natural event that has materially affected him and left him homeless.
It could be due to an illness, an accident, or an acquired disability.
It could be because he was laid off or lost the job he had held for years and for which he had prepared his entire life, whether due to bankruptcy, reorganization, or simply the need for a new profile. He discovered that he isn't the owner of the company, that he's a trusted employee, but not a trusted one, that he isn't family, and that he's expendable.
Regardless of whether he liked the job or not, it represented his security, the majority of the material means to support his quality of life.
He has fallen into the void.
Or perhaps everything was meticulously planned; he was aware of this radical change and therefore took the precautions of a sound retirement plan that would guarantee the means to maintain his current standard of living, even with income adjusted for inflation. However, the lack of meaning in his life persists; there, he was powerless. Now, he has the freedom to do whatever he wants, but he doesn't know what to do. His life revolved around his work, around a materialistic life plan.
The existential questions that sparked this reflection never occurred to him; he had no time to waste, he had a rigorous plan and schedule to follow. Now, he considers them, but according to his plan, in the twilight of his life.
Kill the weather
It's a harsh expression; it's a way of occupying personal time with some unimportant activity; it's waiting, but for what, for whom, or for what purpose?
The situation becomes complicated if he has to find a way to fill the 16 hours of the day, the 7 days of the week, the 365 days of the year, for the years he has left to live; it is letting himself be carried away by the inertia of death, it is a terrible way to live life.
Even more serious is if this "killing time" is under increasingly precarious material conditions, with an income – whether a combination of salary, pension, retirement, rent – that is not enough to cover health, housing, food and entertainment, in a market economy in structural and global crisis where planning is an impossible mission.
At stake is the loss of their human dignity, the last achievement of modernity, enshrined in Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.”
The generalization and normalization of this "killing time" is the emptying of meaning from life, a consequence of which is the dehumanization of society as a whole, the prelude to indifference, barbarism and chaos.
An anthropocentric global crisis, the path was wrong, that's not the way.
What to do?
That's a good question, the floor is yours.
