At the end of the day, you still have to live.

That is, no matter what you've accomplished, or haven't accomplished.  And whether you drive a BMW, ferrari, honda, or subway to the party, drink fancy 15 year old scotch or budweiser, spend your time in front of the television, or the nytimes crossword puzzle, reading fancy french novels or romantic thrillers, find excitement in the simple or sophisticated, you, as in the collection of feelings and thoughts that constitutes your subjective experience in the world, still have to live.  As in, ultimately, all of your decisions only come down to how much weight you want to apply to them, so long as you aren't in prison (and maybe even if you're in prison?)--only that on average, you have to find a way to continue to exist.  That's the point, eventually, regardless of what other ideals come into being to stand for existence. And I'm not sure, of course, that thinking about existence is the best way to go about existing.  Perhaps it is best to think about apple pies.  Or blueberry muffins.  Or maybe I'm just hungry.  

Because we all try really hard, and we want to feel like our trying is worth something.

Or, more to the point, a lot of us find the most efficient route to the least effort and most reward, because effort is difficult, by definition, but we should be really clear with ourselves that when we're in subjective internal monologue mode, self-branding, i.e. creating the narrative that goes with all of the associated actions and thoughts we've left in drip drop pattern on the road back there, well, we're not very good at being accurate.  We're very good at justifying our own actions, and feeling outrage.  And forgetting why we did things.  Because there aren't always reasons, or at least there aren't always reasons that encapsulate all of the stuff that we have now as a result of an experience.  For example, if we just got out of a relationship, there's no way we willed all of the interactions that occurred within the relationship.  Yet it is this type of thinking that often handicaps us about, well, most things--that we somehow willed everything there is around us.

And I started out talking about how we have to come to terms, that is, to live, regardless, and I'm not sure that I can offer you, or myself, any advice on the process.  Because the bottom line is that we're, as in you and I, we're just our own worst enemies: we're simultaneously full of the most rich data that makes the evaluation possible and the most emotional attachment to skewing that data as well.  And so we're always going to be too rigid about some things. But with all of that said, it doesn't necessarily clear the way toward anything specific, is the thing, unless you think it does.  In which case, go out and do it.  You can use me as a footnote for later.