Not So B&W: Evelyn “Glasse”
To me, being “human” reflects a degree of sentience that makes us capable of rational thought, experiencing emotion, and being conscious about our lives. It also dooms us to facing the tyranny of choice. For those of us who have the privilege of free will and agency, we can decide what we want to do with our lives rather than focus all of our energy on just surviving. We will ultimately come across and ponder the plight of why we exist and why we should stay alive. This topic has caused existential angst for me multiple times, and I think that we will all develop our own answers for it, if we haven't already.
Some will conclude that life is meaningless and that any pursuit of meaning is futile. Some will agree that life is meaningless, but believe that we can generate meaning by confronting the absurdity of existence head-on and continuing to live in spite of it, rather than succumb to death. Personally, I fall more comfortably in the existentialist camp. I believe that “existence precedes essence” — we are born into a life without any inherent meaning. However, we can create meaning for ourselves, and I stand by this because I feel like I have already done so in order to survive. I’m an artist at heart — consuming art, creating art, and watching my art impact other people is honestly enough for me to want to continue living. Even if I die tomorrow, my death wouldn’t render any of my past actions meaningless.
Whether or not people are as optimistic as me about finding a reason to live, I do think it’s possible for everyone to do so. People live for their gods, for their kin, for art, for other people — for an endless amount of reasons that could be unique to each person. To me, the phrase “humans doing earthly things” depicts this struggle to find meaning in an intrinsically meaningless existence by simply… existing. In our everyday life, whether we’re aware of it or not, our earthly actions create some form of change. On any given day, we can affect the environment around us, cheer up a stranger at the park, even save someone’s life. In the best case scenario, we consciously take actions in an effort to positively impact the world despite feeling small in the grand scheme of things. And so, we find a reason to live on this plane of being.
-Evelyn “Glasse”
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