Meaningless Success, OG shit, and the Absurd

Success, OG shit, and the Absurd

What did my life in Estonia look like outside of Juks? Why would I sometimes rather be part of the world inside of Juks rather than the world outside of it? Why anything?

While we were still studying in Groningen, I remember how Nils told me that he sometimes misses having a job with a fixed schedule. Compared to student life, where you always have something to do and some sort of responsibility on your mind, having a job with a fixed schedule means you can just switch your brain off when you finish work.

This was something I was looking forward to when I thought about my year in civil service. I hadn’t really experienced something like that for a longer period of time. And in the end, I couldn’t say I really did.

Success. I think Estonia is a place eager for success. After we regained our independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, people wanted to get as far away from collectivism as possible and move on with individualism, a free market and fast progress. The fact that we are such a small nation did indeed make progress quite fast for us.

Modern Estonia is quite well known around the world as an innovator when it comes to technology, IT and e-solutions. As just a couple of examples, we’ve got Skype, Starship Technologies and the first country in the world with a possibility for foreigners to get e-residency. And being small isn’t something you can feel only in sectors related to technology. While studying in the Netherlands I always told my international friends how cool and inspiring it is in Estonia to be much closer to the top players in whichever field, because you can see how they’re people like any other people in this world. In 2015, me and my friend Henri were DJ-s at a party, where the main performers were Cartoon, an Estonian drum ‘n’ bass trio whose most popular song just reached more the 100 million views on Youtube. Just this summer I was part of a production team who started a project to create the first Estonian mocumentary TV-show where we ended up having nearly 10 Estonian celebrities - actors, comedians, singers, rappers, reality TV celebrities - as part of the cast of the pilot episode. The former president of Estonia is the godfather of a friend of mine, the girlfriend of one of my best friends was working in the office of the former president, and the current president just visited my organization’s office a couple of weeks ago. We really are small.

Always when visiting Estonia from the Netherlands, I was inspired by all of this. Yet, as time went by while I was doing my civil service in Juks, I felt pressured by this. One aspect of the service was just having little money, since you earn minimum wage there. Another aspect was feeling the pressure to always utilize these inspiring people somehow - you know, a lot of great people around you means a lot of opportunities to create great things. Finally, most obviously, there’s a continuous struggle not to compare yourself to the achievers around you. My deskmate from high school is the sales manager of one high-end hotel in Beijing, my flatmate Johannes produced six projects (four short movies, a pilot episode for a TV-project, one documentary) during his first year studying film production, another friend secured a job at the biggest estonian retail store chain as a communication manager, my uncle (aged 24) is now the event manager of the biggest Estonian indoor concert venue, and, of course, there’s this one guy who started a taxi-hailing app at the age of 19 and within four years was able to grow it to 350 employees in the team, to offering services in 20 countries around the world, to around 70 000 drivers using the service and millions of clients using the app to order a ride.

E-stonia

It got to me. I have to admit it. After such a performance during university - financing myself by working every weekend, being an instructor for younger students, taking extra subjects, getting solid grades, gathering new experiences and knowledge, meeting a lot of great people - I felt like I can do anything. I still think I can do everything, it’s just that I don’t feel it anymore. I feel I haven’t done that much. During my civil service I slowly felt more and more like I’m not really having that much of an impact on my surroundings. Which is weird, becaue the time in Juks wasn’t an amazing experience just for me, they were happy with what I did for them too. Plus, I did a couple of projects on the side as well, but somehow the joy I felt from getting them done was temporary. For some reason I felt empty.

OG shit. And like feeling empty wouldn’t be annoying by itself, there’s always some shit that life throws at you. Moving back to my home country meant getting closer to the OG (original) shit. You know, the shit everyone has in their life in one form or another. Connected to childhood, or friends, or health, or love, or family or some combination of those. And my life’s bullshit greeted me on a whole new level this year.

It’s never really cool when life throws OG shit at you. There are challenges that one feels are great for growth and there’s some stuff that just puts you out of balance, especially if you’re feeling empty. That’s when you feel like life really has no meaning to it. Not like the optimistic nihilism attitude - choosing your own positive meaning to life if their is no grand meaning to this world - but like really feeling like life is pointless.

All of this got me thinking that I like life inside Juks a lot more than outside of it. Inside Juks there’s joy, laughter, arts, and enjoying the small things. Outside Juks is pressure to perform and conform, worries about failing to do so, and of course all the global problems to feel helpless about (EDIT: not to say there’s nothing to do about them, actually the opposite - there’s too much to do).

Absurd. When you feel empty and life throws OG shit at you, then life feels absurd. Hussle towards some sort of satisfaction, try as you might, but at some point life still throws a big fuck you in your face. So what to do? Answer with the same.

Oooh, I love the absurd. Making stupid jokes, laughing at stupid shit, creating stupid shit. If life has no meaning then you can just laugh about it. The stupid politician, the never-ending pursuit of success that makes you feel stressed and insecure, the people close to you making stupid decisions, whatever bullshit - just fuck it. Laugh about it, work out, go party, whatever. Noone really cares anyway, right?

Me and Henri even created our own track called HVUKBOI with us in the music video acting as two fuckboys, who throw absurd pick-up lines to girls, dump all of them and stay lonely in the end, because we’re such shitheads.

haDe - HVUKBOI (<-- you can click here to watch)

Creating the HVUKBOI realm has been so funny. One part was creating it, getting a bunch of people together for our absurdity. Another part was the reactions. So many people have come up to us and asked: “What the fuck is that and is it a joke or not?”

The funniest time was when we were at a sports festival sort of thing in the summer walking around with Henri, and a girl, whom I had never met before and Henri knew very little, walked up to us and asked us: “Hey, guys, was HVUKBOI a joke or not?”

Another funny moment was at a music festival, when me and my friends were waiting in the line to park our car and I let the window down for some air. Some dudes I'd never seen before from the car next to ours rolled their window down as well, looked at me and said “Hvukboi”.

And finally, my favourite conversation with one friend of mine (a really nice guy):“Hey, Dan, what’s that music video about?”“Haha, what about it?”“Well, at first I was like what the shit is this, but then I thought that wait, this is you. You’re not like this. The whole thing is so meta.”

My friend ended up writing a whole blogpost contemplating about what meta means the way he said it. I’ll translate one part of it:“And when I saw Dan and asked about the video, my doubts about meta were confirmed, though not fully. For Dan added that it’s not meta for everyone and that some people can take it seriously, not as something with a content that is satirical or pushed to the absurd, but something joyful and relatable. And that takes us to the essence of meta-phenomena, to what makes it different from satire. If satire has been made to make fun of something, laugh at something - things that take satire forward and make up it’s ultimate goal - then for meta-phenomena the criticising and ironical aspect isn’t even separated from the object or action. This means that, like we could sense with the HVUKBOI video, meta is strongly based on the context and will express according to a person’s ability to comprehend the element of absurd.”

Can you comprehend the Absurd?
Can you comprehend Juks?
Can you comprehend Success?

Can you comprehend Meaninglessness?Next time: Impact, Progress, Love