Babies and God and Europe and a new car

It started innocently enough yesterday afternoon. My wife was chatting me up via Gmail (which any of you are free to do, incidentally) to tell me the story she'd heard about Super-Ellie, daughter of Marky and Funky.

The story itself was cute -- Super-Ellie has decided she'd like to be a superhero, cape and all, which her father vigorously supports.

And it led to the kind of conversation Dr. Wife and I tend to have more often lately, about what it would be like if we had kids and what we'd name them and when we should go ahead and have them and isn't it nice to just "practice" in the interim. (Practice making them, not having them. We're not babysitters.)

But it soon veered into this weird territory where Dr. Wife suggested I seek counseling (and how she'd love to do the same, just to have somebody uninvested in our lives to talk to) because of my mine-pre-mid-life crisis.

Yes. I would like a cool car. But mostly, I would like a car that doesn't billow a blue cloud of smoke that hangs around forever in the underground parking garage, asking out lab techs and pretending it goes to local music shows.

But that's not what my crisis is about. I'm getting older, which sucks, but I'm pretty OK with that. My crisis is that I have no idea if there is any reason for being alive. Am I doing anything? Should I be doing anything? Is the point of life to be happy or to help other people or to be happy helping other people?

This is one of those times when I wish I believed in God or Gods, because I totally understand how comforting it must be to have a goal for your life -- and one in which progress is hard to gauge, so you don't feel too bad if it seems you're not getting anywhere. Heaven is a great idea, because you work all your life to get there and you won't know if you're admitted until you die.

I happen to believe that there's no more you after you die and thus no afterlife. But for people who believe in Heaven, at least they have a destination, albeit one they can't get to since it doesn't exist. My destination is just a grave and a sudden sharp stop to living.

I have goals. But they're shallow and all-too-measurable. I want to take my wife to Europe, because she wants to go so badly is physically pains her. I want to get a new(ish) car, preferably with crazy-great gas mileage and comfortable seats for my ass. I'd like to make more money, have a functional and productive vegetable garden and get really good at cooking. And I'd like to have kids, maybe, if I can figure out how not to screw them up.

But those don't seem like they mean anything other than they might make me happy. But is that enough? I don't know.

(Other issues that are shrink-worthy: I'm a narcissist, sex-obsessed, masochist, low-high self esteem, I use food to replace love, I use food to replace activity, I spend too much time playing video games because I like something I can control, I can't seem to form what I deem actual connections to other people and I'm only doing a little better with connections to dogs.)