WDYDWYD?
To know all that surrounds me. Why do any of us do what we do? We find different answers to keep us going, but all we have is questions. We never actually find truths, but we find beliefs that we hope to be true. I’m confronted with these questions on a daily basis and I come up with one simple answer, keep asking and keep exploring. From my first English class, Man in his Universe, my teacher, Svein Arber, has permanently dropped an existential lens over my view of life. Though this may seem like a burden on an impressionable high-schooler mind, I saw it as a sort of unveiling. So much of what we do and what society forces us to do are unnecessary for our own satisfaction and happiness. We are a sort of slave to the masses; my teacher’s words alleviated my oppression. I have now taken my teacher’s guidance to heart and explored my own path to truth. From Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot” to Ernest Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises,” my quest has taken turn after turn. It’s almost like these author’s words were spoken to me, specifically. Beckett told me that we as a humanity are waiting for a savior that will never actually come. The god that some of us cling to is merely a figment of our cumulative imagination. His only purpose is to keep us congealed as a whole and make sure we don’t break apart on a search for actual truth. Hemingway goes a step further in criticizing humanity, by stating that though man takes steps in finding truths, he goes down a cyclical path back to the starting point of unknowing. It’s a very depressing notion that no matter what we do, we will all end up as nothing and knowing nothing. So I guess that rant takes me back to my original point that all I look for is knowledge. I try and find meaning in my life, to disprove Hemingway and Beckett. After all, I am relevant. I am significant. I live to understand. I live for knowledge.
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