When I read this passage, much as I hate this section of the book, I had to pause and consider the fact that this is me, and this is my problem in life at the moment.
Depressing. Brutal and depressing.
We see this in experience. One sees this in all obsessive goal-based cultures of pursuit…For you, if you attain your goal and cannot find some way to transcend the experience of having that goal be your entire existence, your raison de faire, so, then, one of two things we see will happen.
One, one is that you attain the goal and realize the shocking realization that attaining the goal does not complete or redeem you, does not make everything for your life “OK” as you are, in the culture, educated to assume it will do this , the goal. And then you face this fact that what you had thought would have the meaning does not have the meaning when you get it, and you are impaled by shock…
–David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest p. 680 (a.k.a. Infinite Summer Week Ten Billion, as I am a total procrastinator and did not finish the book by September 22 like I was supposed to)
300 pages to go…
