Toothless
‘I have led a toothless life’, he thought.
‘ A toothless life. I have never bitten into anything. I was waiting. I was reserving myself for later on-and I have just noticed that my teeth have gone. What’s to be done? Break the shell? That’s easily said. Besides, what would remain? A little viscous gum, oozing through the dust and leaving a glistering trail behind it.’
The Age of Reason, Jean-Paul Sartre
Taman Doa Regina Rosari
Cirebon, 2025
In The Age of Reason (L’Âge de raison), Jean-Paul Sartre tells the story of Mathieu, a man desperately seeking money to pay for his girlfriend Marcelle’s abortion. Yet freedom takes its toll on him. Instead of taking responsibility, he evades it by chasing something he imagines to be greater. His idealism becomes a trap. His fear of an ordinary life leads him into a life of emptiness. His fear of failure ultimately produces failure itself, because he does nothing, an almost perfect embodiment of the puer aeternus.
Freedom is liberating, until it isn’t. When faced with choices, we are free not only to choose, but also not to choose. A deep fear of failure and commitment, often rooted in idealism, leads to inaction, a paralysis produced by freedom itself. We forget that existence precedes essence, as Jean-Paul Sartre insists. We cannot discover what we truly want before we act. Meaning is not found first and then lived. It is made only by proceeding.
Life is foggy, and it will not become clear anytime soon. Standing still and waiting for the fog to dissipate does not help. Waiting for someone to bump into you while you are lost, hoping they will guide you, only strengthens your stillness. You know you are free to move, yet you choose to wait, as if a savior will arrive. They might come, or they might not. If they come and then leave, you will wait again… Until, eventually, no one comes at all.
The horror of life is not failure, but the act of choosing inaction, living in the fog without movement, seeking meaning without action, mistaking stillness for safety, and waiting for meaning to arrive when it only appears in motion. And only then, looking back, you understand: your life had no meaning, not because it lacked potential, but because you never moved. Meaning did not abandon you. You abandoned it by waiting.
In the end, perhaps we should move like Forrest Gump. He did not think too much, he acted. He did what felt right, not the best. Not the most optimal, just right. Life carried him to places he never imagined, and that movement is what gave his life meaning.
