You might be a 40yr old man pondering what life means, as your week has been filled with boiler plate code and you've attend endless meetings with the same filler conversations around missed deadlines and dropped targets.
You wonder what the future of your medium sized business app will be in an economy clouded by AI, LLMs and ChatGPT. The looming macro-economic challenges ring faintly in the back of your mind.
Your father would have been at this table, why isn't he here. At my age he was working a respectable management position in a prestigious company. His whole family meeting around the one table, sharing big laughs and emphatic stories. Where is he tonight?
What happened to social reinforcement for my position in life? Why can I never feel truly at ease in a life position, always under threat of destabilizing shock to the government, family, social or business environments. Why is there never any real physical security? Whom will remember myself in the end?
One broken storyline after another and you end up wondering, what does it all mean? Why don't I have my shit together? Why can't I keep my mind out of troubling thoughts?
Having a long memory and metacognition is persecuted (for lack of a better word) in this modern society.
Sure, you're at a fancy restaurant. The totality of what you know is not satisfied by good company and food, man does not live on bread alone.
You're happy for a moment and so is your daughter, as the earnest waitress delivers the birthday cake.