Have you ever been woken up by your alarm to get ready to go to school and you just don’t feel like moving? Maybe you stayed up too late doing homework or more likely on your phone and are too groggy to peel the sheets off. Its happened to me more often than I’m willing to admit, but in that moment I begin to negotiate with myself so that the need to get out of bed becomes more pressing than my laziness. We rationalize our actions so we have a reason to do them. I thought of my friends I wanted to see that day and the plans we made for lunch. I think about how behind I’ll be on the next test if i’m not present in class to pay attention. You may have someone you love, a pet, a parent, a need to make breakfast, or brush your teeth. The list extends forever and it is only through these goals and responsibilities that we find we have any reason to get up in the morning. I believe we create our own purpose.

In my Ib English class we read a book called the Stranger by Albert Camus which talked about existentialism.

  1. a philosophical theory or approach that emphasizes the existence of the individual person as a free and responsible agent determining their own development through acts of the will.

When I delved a little bit deeper into the author I found his theory in Philosophy, A quest for truth Vol.6. He believed that the only important Philosophical question is, why not commit suicide? Camus often references the greek myth of Sisyphus, wherein man is condemned by the gods to roll a huge stone up a mountain, watch it roll down, and retrieve it, only to repeat the process again, endlessly.

The story of Sisyphus is rather bleak but Camus chose to embrace it. He says, ” A world that can be explained even with bad reasons is a familiar world.-  All healthy men have thought of their own suicide, it can be see, without further explanation, there is a direct connection between this feeling [of absurdity ] and a longing for death. – Belief in the absurdity of existence must then dictate his conduct. ”

When I wake up in the morning I may need some convincing to get ready and do the things I need to do. These things I am aware of are just means to an end that leads nowhere, but I have hope in the absurd. I believe that we create our own meaning in life whether thats a holy book, family, friends, education, or most importantly food so that we don’t feel pointless or empty. It’s so easy to stare into the face of darkness and feel it crush you. To scream out the question of purpose only to have no answer, so I just stopped asking the question. When I hear the story of the man who rolled that stone up the mountain I find myself already looking for a purpose, a will, even if its just to watch the sunrise. It’s the fight to feel something in this world that makes it all that important. We choose to care and give ourselves because it makes us feel more alive, so I embrace the groggy feeling I have at 6:30 in the morning and reject the idea of going back to bed because today I have things to do, today I have a life to live. I reach over to my phone willing and able to except the challenges that the day has readied me to face, I turn off the tone and check my calendar to see what is on the agenda but false alarm, it’s only Saturday.

One thought on “False alarm, it’s only Saturday.”

  1. This is a really great response. I am so excited that you have taken so quickly to the material from IB WL, and that you see the material of the classroom as fodder for changing or engaging your way of viewing the world. I, too, am compelled by an existentialist viewpoint, insofar as it doesn’t rely on anything artificial. It acknowledges to objective “pointlessness” that an honest materialist and cosmological view of reality seems to insist upon, and gives us permission to “play at purpose-making.” Jean Paul Sartre writes of existentialism as a new humanism, in which he tries to read an essential compassion and reciprocity in an absurd universe.

    I am also continually impressed with your writing, which has a clear voice and a compelling sense of purpose (pun intended?) — To really make your writing POP, start considering your use of punctuation. In places, you don’t use enough of it. This is not so much disruptive as it is a missed opportunity to create rhythm in your writing.

    An easy first step, look for times when it makes sense to put a comma after introductory clauses or phrases:

    When I wake up in the morning I may need some convincing to get ready and do the things I need to do.

    becomes–

    When I wake up in the morning, I may need some convincing to get ready and do the things I need to do.

    This is actual grammatical correctness, but it also grows out of a sense of rhythm. The comma adds a beat between ideas, a moment for our minds to register the relationships between parts of the sentence.

    A more complex example:

    I believe that we create our own meaning in life whether thats a holy book, family, friends, education, or most importantly food so that we don’t feel pointless or empty.

    There are a lot of things to keep track of in this sentence, and that food bit, so funny, gets lost in the middle…try rearranging:

    I believe that we create our own meaning in life, so that we don’t feel pointless or empty. This sense of purpose may come from a holy book, family, friends, education, or–most importantly–food.

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