Been having one of my semi-regular existential crises the last few months about the meaning of life.

The problem, as always, is there is no meaning to life, save what you choose to give it and, as grateful as I am for my daughter and the opportunities I have, well, sometimes it's not enough, dammit.

Where's the international acclaim for my novels? Where's my Charlie Sheen porn star threesomes? Do I really only get to drive a friggin' Mazda 3? IS THIS IT?

You might disagree about life being meaningless, but all you'll do is spout some dogma or fiction dreamt up long ago by bigger brains to keep us baboons in the trees paying mortgages.

We know nothing. We can't even trust our senses, as evidenced by the fact 50 people can watch a car accident or movie and come away with a different version of events.

I can be a bit of a sook and working from home gives me ample opportunity to indulge my moods and label them "existential crises".

For the last week I've also had the Pink Floyd song The Thin Ice in my head. The lyrics begin:

Momma loves her baby
And daddy loves you too
And the sea may look warm to you babe
And the sky may look blue

Basically it's lullaby where songwriter Roger Waters urinates on the fantasies we soothe children with that "everything's gonna be OK, chin up, life's grand".

He goes on to warn:

If you should go skating
On the thin ice of modern life
Don't be surprised,
When a crack in the ice
Appears under your feet
You slip out of your depth and out of your mind
As you claw the thin ice!

Uplifting huh?

Anyway, I've also been reading a rather enjoyable 1938 novel Alamut by the Slovenian author Vladimir Bartol about the intrigues of Ismaili sect of Islam.

The Ismailis gave us the word "assassin" for the famous ways its warriors killed powerful enemies via stealth.

The supreme Ismaili motto dramatised in the novel is "Nothing is True. Everything is Permitted" which was 'borrowed' by the mega popular video game Assassin's Creed.

As Bartol writes of the Ismaili: "Truth is unattainable to us, it doesn't exist for us."

The majority of people are "afraid of uncertainty, which is why they prefer a lie that promises something tangible to even the most exalted truth ... whoever wants to be prophet to the masses has to treat them like children and feed them fairy tales and falsehoods".

It struck me then why I had that Pink Floyd song in my head. I was hoping for mummy to tell me it'll be alright, console me about the big bad world, give my life some more meaning, when (as ever) only I can do it.

It's lots of little things that make a full life - not just a child, a job or threesomes. You can find meaning in a Bible, bottle or basketball.

Thankfully, like most Aussies, at least I get the chance to choose what the meaning of my life is, a luxury denied much of the world just trying to survive.

Man, I gotta get a girlfriend.

