Second opinion

What is the purpose of life? Is push-penny really as good as poetry, as Bentham contends? Surely there can have been few of us who have not sometimes wondered whether all our frantic activity — mainly getting and spending — is quite as necessary or important as we like to pretend it is.

It is when I am faced by sullen youths, who tell me that life is pointless and not in the least worth living, that all my adolescent angst reawakens. Oh, I know perfectly well that the sullen youth with existential problems is really complaining that his declarations of undying lust for another equally sullen and unattractive youth of the opposite sex have been rejected in favour of those of his best friend. But still, I cannot help wondering whether I have wasted my life, whether I should have lived differently if I had really known what life was for.

I had a long talk with a disenchanted (or should I say unenchanted?) youth last week. He had tried to hang himself, but had been cut down by his mother. I asked him why he had done it.

‘Life’s shit,’ he said.

Well, at least one couldn’t accuse him of longwindedness. I asked him whether he had any friends.

‘A few.’

‘What do you talk about?’ I asked.

‘About all the things that piss us off.’

Come to think of it, my conversation is not so very different. But I flatter myself that my complaints are elegantly phrased, and furthermore entirely justified.

‘What annoys you?’ I asked.