I was halfway through unloading pallets on that rattling forklift when it hit me; the pallets I had just staged mattered as much as the dozens waiting at the far end of the building, yet none of it mattered at all. The vibration of the levers against my fingers, the dull thunk of a pallet dropped too hard, the hum of the lights overhead; each detail felt absurdly trivial and achingly significant. I was part of a chain of tasks: staging forty pallets for outbound trucks, pulling fifty off inbound trailers, running reports in the office, guiding a coworker while juggling everything else. So, basically a Tuesday at 10:30 for me.
Some days five trucks rolled out; on others fifteen left the yard; inbound was the same. There were five of us; two on inbound, two on outbound, me filling in where needed. Part of every shift, I was back at the computer, trying to forecast how to make more space and answering emails. The warehouse was always in constant motion, and I was caught in it like everything else.
That insight arrived in the recent years, when fluctuating priorities blurred one shift into the next. It could have been any day of the week, but I remember the way the steering wheel felt cool under my palm, how my knuckles turned white when I braked too hard to avoid a misaligned box. In that split second I saw every pallet I had scanned, every report I had filed, every bite of the sandwich I had for breakfast; it all had to be done. Every act demanded my time, and because each one was equally unavoidable, nothing seemed special, and paradoxically that made every single action both meaningless and monumental.
Once it clicked, I started running that strange realization through every aspect of my life. Scanning a pallet barcode or sending an email felt the same as stacking four pallets on top of each other or changing the tank on the forklift. It all felt equally weightless, because every obligation tugged on the same cosmic pulley. I was living the law of alchemy; to give so that I could receive, to take so that I could give. Each drop of effort bled seamlessly into the next. The loop never ended; I just became hyper-aware of its cycle.
There is a strange freedom in realizing that infinity equals zero. If every task carries equal weight then you need not build a hierarchy of priorities; you simply choose one. You unload the pallets because trailers arrive. You run the report because there’s no more room to move stuff in. You show up because someone has to witness the shift. In that light you are both a flicker in the void and an essential gear in a vast machine. Every action turns the wheel, so each step is both trivial and vital.
For all its stark geometry this paradox has a punchline: life’s absurd joke is that it is solemn and hilarious in the same exhale. Samuel Beckett wrote “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” That insistence on redoing minor acts before a cosmic shrug tastes like bitter metal with a drop of salt sweet on the tongue. I picture that forklift idling in the dock and I hear Beckett’s laughter in the rafters: your work will never end, and that is precisely why it matters.
Then there’s the odd paradox of laughter, pain, and how sometimes the deepest wounds spark the biggest laughs. I’ve seen a coworker crack up recounting a near-miss; winded, with their heart racing. A few moments later, they dissolved into tears. We guffaw at the absurdity of our own bruises, and in that release, pain feels oddly lighter. Even the silliest joke can wound deeper than an insult, by exposing the fragile hope we cling to. And this works in both directions; laughing to keep from sobbing, crying at the memory of a punch line. We long to touch the raw edges of what it means to be alive.
Absurdity isn’t a call to nihilism. It’s like bumping into your teacher at a coffee shop and realizing the person who teaches you also has a spouse, kids, errands, and weekend plans you never knew about. You don’t doubt their lessons, you just discover there was more to their story all along that you never considered. In that same way every beep of a barcode and every keystroke in a report become gestures that build meaning. We may call tasks urgent or trivial; the only real verdict is that they simply must be done.
We all hate laundry, right? Instead of tackling every piece at once, just fold all the shirts first. Then walk away; stretch, grab a drink, let your brain reset. Come back and do the socks. Then the pants. It’s not about endurance; it’s about rhythm. The same thing applies at work. Scan some pallets, park them in their slots, put the forklift back… then step away. Let the task breathe before diving into the next. When you return, everything is lighter, sharper. You’re not grinding through it; you’re flowing with it. You may not be able to find ways to do this at work right away, so lets find some ways to try it at home first.
Before you go to bed, ask yourself which task tomorrow you will tackle simply because it must be done, with no hidden agenda and no trophy at the finish line. Perhaps it is vacuuming your bedroom, or taking the trash to the curb. Maybe it’s jotting three lines in your blog. Whatever it is, do it with full awareness. Feel it as both an anchor and a balloon; both grounding you in reality, but also lightening your load by giving you a small sense of accomplishment.
If you need a tangible ritual, try a paradox jar. Each time you notice a mundane task like folding clothes, getting dressed, or putting gas in the car, jot down on a scrap of paper, fold it, drop it in the jar. At week’s end, empty the jar into your palm. Hold those little folds, each one a moment of absolute necessity and utter absurdity. Feel the weight of everything that mattered and the lightness of knowing nothing needed permission. You did them all; you do them all constantly without noticing. Does it matter? Of course it does. Pick five things out of your pile and don’t do them for a week. Then we’ll talk more about what matters.
We lean into this paradox; not to resolve it, but to live inside its tension. We breathe in the absurdity, breathe out the gravity. We laugh at futility and marvel at the machine. We stage the pallets, file the reports, hit send, and somehow through that cycle of doing and redoing we become witnesses to our own lives.
So here we stand: the trucks will keep rolling in, the scanners will keep beeping, and the systems will keep syncing. You’ll show up again tomorrow, maybe with a question on your lips, or maybe with a grin. Do it because it must be done, even if there is no banner at the end of the race. Let that tension be your guide, and in the space between everything and nothing, you may find yourself.
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