De Vita
Again, this was written while I was off at the JACT Summer School, and I haven't edited it in the slightest, which is why it might read a bit weirdly.
I freely admit it; I know nothing about like. I am young - too young, some people say, for my opinions to be worth anything - and inexperienced, and, being a teenager, people say that I'm prone to melodrama.
I also freely admit that I know nothing about my purpose in life, and I have very little idea of how to make one for myself. I am too young to be free - which would help - but I'm too old not to believe that fundamentally, life is meaningless. We exist because however many years ago someone fertilised an egg and the resulting ball of cells was carried to term and lived; our only purpose is to make as many more balls of cells as we can, and if we reject that we have nothing.
Bleak diatribe aside, I'm not treading any new ground here. I'm not treading any new ground either when I say that I find it wonderful that we can choose what to do with our lives and reject the only purpose we were ever given. Perhaps I'm not even treading any new ground when I say that I've been brought to my knees by these questions: What do I live for? Why do all these things happen to me? Am I worthy to live? And since other people seem to have found the answers already, sometimes I wonder whether I'm just a middlingly eloquent idiot (and perhaps not even that).
Yet, for all that, I refuse to let go of the questions, even if doing so would make me happy. I don't really know what I live for, but I plan to keep on living, both because I want to and because of a pesky little thing called survival instinct.
Some people - a lot of people - look on pleasures as the ends of life. As long as they're not hurting anyone, I can't say I blame them; I'd like to be happy myself. It's just I think that I'll find truer and longer-lasting happiness in freedom and purpose than I will in, say, drinking, and I've got the rest of my life to prove myself right or wrong. Maybe some day I'll lie back and wonder why I've done what I've done, but until that day comes I'll continue looking for purpose, and if that day I decide I've completely messed up my life then, well...it's never too late to start again.
I freely admit it; I know nothing about like. I am young - too young, some people say, for my opinions to be worth anything - and inexperienced, and, being a teenager, people say that I'm prone to melodrama.
I also freely admit that I know nothing about my purpose in life, and I have very little idea of how to make one for myself. I am too young to be free - which would help - but I'm too old not to believe that fundamentally, life is meaningless. We exist because however many years ago someone fertilised an egg and the resulting ball of cells was carried to term and lived; our only purpose is to make as many more balls of cells as we can, and if we reject that we have nothing.
Bleak diatribe aside, I'm not treading any new ground here. I'm not treading any new ground either when I say that I find it wonderful that we can choose what to do with our lives and reject the only purpose we were ever given. Perhaps I'm not even treading any new ground when I say that I've been brought to my knees by these questions: What do I live for? Why do all these things happen to me? Am I worthy to live? And since other people seem to have found the answers already, sometimes I wonder whether I'm just a middlingly eloquent idiot (and perhaps not even that).
Yet, for all that, I refuse to let go of the questions, even if doing so would make me happy. I don't really know what I live for, but I plan to keep on living, both because I want to and because of a pesky little thing called survival instinct.
Some people - a lot of people - look on pleasures as the ends of life. As long as they're not hurting anyone, I can't say I blame them; I'd like to be happy myself. It's just I think that I'll find truer and longer-lasting happiness in freedom and purpose than I will in, say, drinking, and I've got the rest of my life to prove myself right or wrong. Maybe some day I'll lie back and wonder why I've done what I've done, but until that day comes I'll continue looking for purpose, and if that day I decide I've completely messed up my life then, well...it's never too late to start again.
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