There’s something contemplative about bus rides and staring out the window, trying to catch a glimpse of all that passes you by. It’s kind of like life in the abstract; sometimes you feel like you’re just a bystander, watching everything go by quicker than you wanted or expected. You just want to beg and plead for life to take a break, to stop rapidly changing.
During my contemplation on the bus, I too wanted to cry out to the bus driver, I wanted to ask him to slow down so I can get a better look at the blooming spring flowers. Unfortunately, I knew this was an irrational and selfish request and through my self-deliberation, my mind ended up on Jonathan Warkentine’s piece titled “Death and the Meaning of Life.”
As you can infer from the headline, the article ponders large, philosophical questions that are subjectively interpreted, and as I continued to think about the article, I tried to answer all of the existential questions put forward, wondering what the point of life really was.
After reading Nicomachean Ethics for the second time in my Ancient Greek and Medieval philosophy class, I realized Aristotle was really on to something.
The purpose to life is reaching what he calls eudaimonia or happiness.
Happiness is an essential feeling that can only be found through living in between what is excess and what is deficient.
For example, we can look at two vices: being foolhardy and being cowardly. In life it is important to fear your future but only to the extent that that fear motivates you – being overly confident has the potential to depress you if you don’t reach all of the goals you set for yourself.
Therefore, it is necessary to find the median, the balance between confidence and fear, or two vices in general. The Yin and the Yang. The unity. The melting of an ice cube on a concrete pavement, morphing into it.
We must stop exaggerating the little things in life that for some reason influence our perspectives. It’s as if we’re all emotional masochists, enjoying the unnecessary, mental pain we put ourselves through. Your boyfriend or girlfriend broke up with you? There are more fish in the sea. You made a 50 percent on your economics exam? Recognize you’re not pushing yourself to your limit and try harder. Your parents want you to be a doctor? Do what makes you, not someone else, feel fulfilled.
Live through your own eyes and crush the glasses that people ask you to wear.
Suffering is inevitable and it hurts, I get it. But it’s about time we recognize that life isn’t fair and that shouldn’t stop us from being happy. There is always more we can do to ease the inevitable hardships that come with life. We find meaning through obliterating the things that hold us back and embracing the beauty of what we love.
My existentialism has helped me get through a lot of difficult times.
Sometimes, you start to feel so bad about everything that has been happening around you. That your life has hit a slump and you’re unable to crawl out of it. You feel disheartened and helpless. Like you can’t breathe.
You feel like you could have prevented all of the atrocious things that are happening in your life and you feel like you’re alone. All alone.
I know I feel like this more than I should but as time has progressed, I’ve realized I’m wrong. Very wrong.
I’ve realized that as a human being I have the capability to change my situation. There are always highs that will compensate for the lows; it’s just a question of how I posit my attitude.
Why should I waste precious moments that will last for eternity? Why should I sit and be unhappy about things that will eventually pass? Why can’t I just live? So, after all of this, what is the point of life?
It’s pushing yourself. It’s staying up late correcting a poem you wrote for that one creative writing class that has your heart and soul. It’s editing an article for the fifth time because you know it could be better. It’s testing your limits and showing everyone who ever doubted you that you never listened. It’s about happiness and finding the things that easily get you there.
And it’s about recognizing that life is terrible sometimes, but all you can do is embrace the darkness and find a light.
Editorials Editor Priyanka Krishnamurthy is a College sophomore from Coppell, Texas.
Cartoon by Priyanka Pai
The Emory Wheel was founded in 1919 and is currently the only independent, student-run newspaper of Emory University. The Wheel publishes weekly on Wednesdays during the academic year, except during University holidays and scheduled publication intermissions.
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The Point of Life is an exclamation !
Let’s hope your philosophy professors don’t read this. ” There are always highs that will compensate for the lows,” doesn’t sound very existentialist to me.