What does it all mean?
When I learned what existentialism meant in 11th grade I thought, “That sounds like it would either make somebody kill themselves or feel totally freeing.”
My interpretation was that existentialism meant that nothing matters.
Today I revisit that feeling.
Why do we do anything
I glanced at my phone at my friend Erin’s texts with me and felt meaning. Does that mean I only exist in connection with other?
Whenever I notice that I think someone is really overdue for a sit-down examination of their dreams for their life I tend to notice it’s about time I did that as well.
What on earth would constitute a meaningful, worthwhile existence?
What experiences should you aim for? Why? Why bother even asking why? Perhaps the questioning itself at times leads us away from the purity of knowledge that occurs at the first knowing. Maybe the first knowing is simply a conditioned trauma response.
Does the idea that none of it matters make you want to put a gun to your head or free you to pursue the things that really matter to you?
This line of thought has brought several quotes or at least the people that created the quotes. Perhaps you will also enjoy them.
“Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.” - Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning (all his quotes are worthwhile, see here)
“And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for”. - Dead Poets Society (movie)
& Ethan Hawke’s recent TED Talk
In my last online course I implored you to make a list of everything you want, and make it over and over again for a week. Because you are going to realize over the course of making it that you don’t actually want half the shit you wrote down. You’ll discover a deeper layer and deeper meaning and begin to scratch at the doorway of what you really want, and I believe that the wants you experience are sacred, even as I try to withdraw myself delicately from any push into your experience.
What you want you think no one cares about deserves the light of day. Anything within us that we do not feel a connection with deserves an attempt to respect it.