What are we living for?

By Serge Kreutz
1998

This essay on the science of love deals primarily with the question of how we can provoke and manipulate others so that a person by whom we want to be loved loves us. Nevertheless, I want to address some less technical and more philosophical issues as well.

Why, in the first place, do I dedicate so much of my creative energy trying to find out how love works? Financial interest definitely is not the engine behind it. If my interests would be financial, I would never have chosen writing as a profession.

I dedicate so much of my energy to thinking and writing about love, because it's so essential to my philosophical outlook.

I have not elected to be born, and I would have been thankful if my parents could have been more constrained around the time I was conceived. I don't really believe that there is any use in being alive. Most life really is just suffering. And for what? When we're dead, it will just be the same as if we never were born. Our selves are just in the realm of thought, but they are bound to the temporary existence of our bodies. The moment we die, it's all over.

I see no advantage in living but I'm a victim of nature. A rather essential mechanism of all living matter, an instinctive fear of death (nonsensical as it may be) prevents me from doing what reason commands me to do, which is, to put my worthless life to an end by my own hands, and to do so NOW.

I've read many books on suicide, including manuals on how to do it. It may sound funny, but I find comfort in reading suicide manuals. Nevertheless I'm not decrepit enough yet to proceed, or not courageous enough, or just too firmly in the grip of that mechanism of all living matter, an instinctive fear of death.

Not seeing enough sense in being alive but afraid to commit suicide, I pass my time in the pursuit of those moments when I forget that whole shithouse.

In my late teens and early twenties, I was quite happy chasing the opportunity for nothing but sexual intercourse. I wanted girls to fall in love with me so they would let me in. I regularly had a steady girlfriend, but I never stayed long with a particular one. It wasn't that much that they couldn't satisfy me. Rather, many other girls I encountered too easily aroused me. I usually preferred a new one over the previous one. I liked the challenge and the newness, and I could be single-minded for hours when starting a new relationship. No melancholy and no thoughts on the future or the past. Just determined to copulate. It was a time of ready erections, and I could reach a climax easily... though I did usually aim for full intercourse. I didn't care so much whether the girls were beautiful, for as long as they were willing. I never had to worry whether my response would work.

But I have lost interest in that life-style.

There now has to be more than just willingness on their part. They have to be in love with me, I have to be in love with them, and the whole affair needed some tragic elements. I could never just hire a prostitute.

Have I become victim of my own success? I have laid a number of girls, and though in more recent years, some of the girls I met in less prosperous countries may have had economic considerations, none were prostitutes.

If my problems were diagnosed as boredom because of too much sexual experience, I'd happily agree to a dose of Alzheimer's.

On the other hand, the expertise I have gained in the science of love has been born out of the same difficulty. For many years now, easy solutions are no longer an option for me. Love and sexuality has to be something extraordinary to these girls, which really disqualifies casual lays. It has to be love, not just sex, in order to give me that kick which makes me forget the meaninglessness of life. I need to be involved in a Romeo and Juliet setting in order to be really entertained.

I'm strange in another way, too. Even though I don't hold my own life in high esteem (it's such an unimportant flash in time), I do go a long distance to preserve the little value that it has. I'm a law-abiding man, primarily because being jailed would destroy every perspective of getting out of life the only thing that matters... those moments in the arms of a desired women when I can forget that whole shithouse.

I'm also extraordinarily careful to avoid accidents because becoming disfigured would have the same effect as being jailed. And I eat healthy, don't drink and don't smoke, because all of this would interfere with either a sufficiently appealing presentation of myself, or with my own ability to enjoy what really is the only thing worth living for.

If I'm not pursuing a love affair, all I'm doing is preparing for one, either by taking care of my financial basis, or by improving, in any way, the position from which I start, e.g. learning a language for a place where I want to find a new girlfriend, or working on my physique, or studying options for the future. I practically don't waste any time on any other entertainment. All I do is just in service to the pursuit of that specific little happiness that let's me forget the worthlessness of my own existence.

And mind you, I'm not depressed, I'm just realistic. I only don't like to fall victim to illusions about the sense of living. The sad truth is, there is none.