“We should come home from far, from adventures, and perils, and discoveries everyday, with new experience and character.” Wrote Henry David Thoreau
So I come home yesterday with a concrete definition of life. Which may not seem appropriate to many but to me it just sounds perfect.
“Life is an endless toil for making oneself an ideal image in the society towards a futile end we call Death!”
I came up with these lines last night, when I was walking alone and the night sky was shimmering with bright yellow stars, the cool wind was blowing, I wonder did the night sky look different in ancient times? We now live clustered around brightly lit metropolitan areas, in which smoke and industrial pollutants have combined to give us the visible light?
If you spend the night away from civilized world, in wilderness or near mountains. We can only then witness the pure, magical beauty of night sky. Those savages were lucky to have a clear vision of starry night.
Then with a long sigh, I gaze my eyes towards the road, the immense traffic, almost everyone was in a rush. To get it done whatever they had in mind. Can I stop this hustle. I thought so they might ponder for a second are they truly living? because they live so cautiously that they don’t live at all.
How could I define life? I ask myself while taking a puff, holding the cigarette in my hand.
How does the world around us define Life?
Well! To investigate this argument I had to re-call how the society and people tell us about life and in a nutshell it is simply this:
We are born in a world where the path on which we walk is already paved by others, planned are laid before even our birth, our name, religion and career paths are decided by our parents. The external stimuli conditions us to be what we are today.
So what if these conditions were never applied? what if nature hold us all pure and innocent. What if our education is so liberal as it is given to the animals through their nature and instincts.
Why are you then? defending whats not yours but what others thrust it upon you. The perception about a good livelihood, the university, job and getting married and to carry on this sacred duty because it is in the equilibrium for standardized lifestyle. Where the wisdom is what the majority thinks, and thinking we have to do this because everyone is doing?
Here at this hour comes the depression, the absurdity of our lives. And the existential crisis!
My Definition for life?
Walking on the pathway which is unpaved, not being traveled by anyone else before is the mode of life I should trend in that is what I have yet to discover at least in this scenario I’m aware of myself, as Nietzsche said ” Man is something that must be overcome”.
Life is making up of oneself, Being aware that you live and finding happiness with in one’s own soul.
It is like the punishment of ‘Sisyphus’ as Camus wrote in his famous work “The myth of Sisyphus.”
His essay concludes, “The struggle itself is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy”.
Individuality is the key to find and create your own definition of life:
We all are different as are our DNA’s. Express your uniqueness to leave your mark in the world.
Educate yourself independently, be self-reliant and appreciate yourself if you feel your different from others. There is no freedom in collectivism. The truth is we are going to die alone so all the suffering and pain in this world we have to endure alone, others might show us sympathy and love but that doesn’t not provide us with the meaning or understanding.
In the philosophy of the absurd, Camus presented a man’s futile search for meaning, unity, and clarity in the face of an unintelligible world devoid of God and eternal truths or values. Does the realization of the absurd require suicide?
Camus answers, “No. It requires revolt.” He then outlines several approaches to the absurd life. The final chapter compares the absurdity of man’s life with the situation of Sisyphus, a figure of Greek mythology who was condemned to repeat forever the same meaningless task of pushing a boulder up a mountain, only to see it roll down again.
Just sit down for while and come up with your own lines and express life as it fits you cause if you exist than this world exist, you’re the world nothing else matters.
Please do share with me how do you define life? I ill b glad to know 🙂
The Portrait of an Artist 