For the majority of us, life is pretty damn good. We are not starving. We do not have suicide bombers blowing up our buses. Our country is not harboring weapons of mass destruction outlawed by a United Nations sanction (our biological and nuclear weapons are legally sanctioned). Overall, our life is pretty damn good. Denver, Colorado is a great place to live and receive an education. The majority of the complaints concern the lack of soy milk at the local Starbucks.

However, when I look around campus I see some disturbing things. I am sure I am not the only one noticing this. Every weekend, and weekday, on occasion, I see the same thing: escapism. The kid down your hall drinks himself to sleep every night. The group next door smokes herb until 3 every morning. The girl across your hallway spends hours on end talking to her boyfriend 2,000 miles away. The geek cattycorner to your room spends all his waking moments glued to his computer. The world around me seems to be infatuated with the idea of escaping from the current situation. But the situation is the best available for human beings. Why then the escapism?

Are we simply that dissatisfied? Are we looking for something that is beyond all of our material acquisitions? Or are we beyond the point of looking for some deeper meaning in our lives? Perhaps the search for meaning has replaced the actual appreciation for life itself. I propose the search for the meaningless life. I propose the pursuit of the life that needs no escaping.

For once in my time at the University of Denver, I would like to walk in to somebody’s room and see them sitting at their chair and thinking quietly. I would ask them what they were doing and they would simply and honestly say, “Nothing, and enjoying every minute of it.”