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Sometimes it’s impossible to imagine that everyone keeps going; I don’t know why New Yorkers don’t kill themselves in droves — a dark thought, but not an illogical thought: you just see so much misery, whether from poverty or wealth, in the city. The will to live is unerringly strong; pre- or non- logical. It’s just there, the will that wills us. Wake up, make coffee, drag your ass to work and back; maybe get drunk before sleep. The gap between financial wealth and quality of life is crazy. I make a decent middle class salary as a teacher in an urban school and it often doesn’t seem worth the intense stress of the job. The only thing that makes me happy is living alone; but the cost of living alone is my basic quality of life. And my job — while it earns a lot less — is nothing, in terms of stress, to a banker or a surgeon or some other stupidly demanding white collar profession; let alone a line cook, or taxi driver, or nurse in an emergency room. In capitalist terms, the existentialist is just a complainer.
