Big ideas, bad ideas

This week I went to see Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket with a good friend. The movie reminded me of a post I wrote long ago: "It must be so sad to realize that what you dedicated your life for is actually wrong, or unimportant. Maybe there is a point of no return, you can't accept the unimportance of something after you spend a certain number of years working for it. After that point, you just keep doing what you have done for years, and you try to convince a world that doesn't care that your story has a point to it."

Assuming you know the best for someone other than yourself is a formula that was proven wrong over and over. We are trying to add depth and meaning to our lives, but at what cost? Are ideas more important than people? (Assuming it's really naive idealism that's driving us.) How to make peace with the arbitrariness of loss and misery? Should fortune come with responsibility? Is it possible to change anything?

I don't know. I wish I found a way to sustainably forget about all this.