Meaning of Life

Maybe, waking up too early sometimes doesn't help (my day started at 4:30am).

It was quite a crazy day today finding myself too indulged with the idea of existentialism. It wasn't a busy day at work and I just want to make the day a 'learning day' (a form of diversion as well). The term existentialism just popped into my head and there I was reading Wikipedia entries, magazine articles, and blog articles about it. Actually, months ago, I read an interesting reflection of a journalist on Existentialism .

Wikipedia defines Existentialism as:

• A philosophical movement which posits that individual human beings create the meaning and essence of their lives.

• Its themes of existentialism include: "dread, boredom, alienation, the absurd, freedom, commitment, and nothingness"

• Concept of Dread: "A different but related meaning is attributed to Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855). In The Concept of Anxiety, Kierkegaard used the word Angest (Danish, meaning "dread") to describe a profound and deep-seated spiritual condition of insecurity and despair in the free human being…While Kierkegaard's feeling of angst is fear of actual responsibility to God, in modern use, angst is broadened to include general frustration associated with the conflict between actual responsibilities to self, one's principles, and others (possibly including God)."

When I was doing a search, I was led to this article. Some excerpts:

• "What is a modern-day existentialist? One who asks the great questions—"Who am I?" "Why am I here?"—and finds no answer. Can a Christian be an existentialist? He may ask the existentialist questions and suffer the existentialist agonies of doubt and darkness, but for him the answer of faith has come."

• "Existentialism, unlike traditional philosophies, does not try to think its way above or beyond man's subjective moods—it glorifies them. Fear and trembling, guilt and death, are valued by existentialists as concomitants of man's encounter with the void around him and his necessary decision to walk forward in the darkness. For existentialism, in spite of all its talk, is a philosophy of action; words by themselves do not count."

While reading through the articles, I've realized that maybe subconsciously, I've become an existentialist (well, I'm sure that I consciously abide by the idea that meaning of life is something you create).

• My blog's name: "Always Anxious": That concept of anxiousness occurred to me right after college. It has been my status since 2003.

• My former online pseudonym (still my PEx alias though): "huami": It's "Who am I?"

• I love Van Gogh's Starry Night Painting (which is said to be an existentialist art work) and even wrote something about hope and anguish in connection with stars.
  

But isn't that all of us are somehow confronted of existentialists questions? Isn't that we are all after "finding our meaning or purpose"? Aren't we all experiencing dread; certain angst?

So I asked a friend (via YM), "Are we all existentialists?"

He answered, "Not everyone is an existentialist. Sectarians are hardly existentialists since they put God as giving value to ones life and not man alone"

Anxiety 03/11/07

Anxiety seems to give balance to life.
It's the feeling that provides the steam to struggle.
It's the feeling that makes you want more and be better.
It's the feeling that challenges you to be what you really want to be.
It's the emotion that let's you explore life to the fullest.
It lets you live each day is if there'll be no other day.

However, it's also the feeling that puts you in a state of depression.
It makes you realize how far you are from what you want to become.
It makes you feel how different the path you're taking against your goal.
It's the feeling that lets you realize that life can never be perfect after all.

Nonetheless, it's the feeling that makes you feel alive.
It's something that makes you feel human.
Yes, it's that crazy feeling that can make you become worth it...

...in time.


Apparently, anxiety (despair) challenges one to create meaning to his life.

As the conversation continued, my friend reacted, "If you think you're an existentialists, then you might want to ask your self why you go to church."

I answered, "I've stopped going to church."

He reacted, "Wait. Do you believe in a Higher Being?"

My answer, "It doesn't matter. I don't worry if there's

His reply, "Maybe you've to rethink. Existentialists are firm of their position on the existence of Higher Being."

So does this make me an agnostic existentialist? And does it matter for me to answer this question?