The end of the semester is near, and even though writing about the meaning of life was probably the most meaningful thing I ever did in my life, I decided to stop doing so. That’s right, this is going to be the last and final post of this blog.
Writing a blog about the meaning of life proved to be very special for me. At first, I tried so hard to give insight to other people about the meaning of life, that I was completely neglecting myself. I was so preoccupied with reading philosophical articles and conveying their meanings to other people, that I just failed to realize that all this critical thinking and analyzing is benefiting me just as much as any other reader of my blog–or even more. After carefully analyzing what we should believe in (in the 2nd post) I remember saving the document, and just stopping there for a couple of minutes and thinking about what I believe in. It was in that moment that I realized that the whole thing was very vague and unknown to me, and I wasn’t even aware of it before.
That was the time when the situation changed. This blog wasn’t merely a blog anymore. It was the solution to my problems. Problems that I didn’t even know I had before, but which were literally destroying me inside. Starting from this point, I didn’t write because I had to, but because I wanted to with all my heart. The ignorance I had been facing, was slowly being replaced by knowledge and intellect, which were increasing more with every post I made.
Today we are more anxious and stressed about things than ever before. We worry about everything. But the guilt we feel, the anxiety, is nothing more than the guilt one experiences when keeping the game going on. The game of disguise. The game of hide and seek. We have lost our sense of self. We cannot be ourselves, instead, we are what society tells us to be. We have forgotten how to stop and think about who we truly are, and it’s entirely our fault. We keep dressing our daughters in pink dresses and giving them make up and dolls to play with, while we buy legos and racing cars for our sons. We keep enforcing gender stereotypes. Thus, we don’t let our children decide for themselves, and they grow up being lost, just like we are. Men are expected to act up to certain impossible standards society set up (“you need to be brave, you cannot show emotions, you cannot cry in public”). Well, what if I want to show emotions and cry in public. Is it wrong?
These set of society’s rules that apparently everybody has accepted are what is causing our problems in the first place. One of the most important things I have learned while writing about the meaning of life is that we must create our own ideas and standards around which we build our lives. Our life cannot be meaningful or purposeful if we live according to standards that society set up. I learned that we must stay true to our character and live up to our own values.
But before arriving at that point, I had a long voyage, which I shared with the readers. It was a tough time, but the results are more than fruitful. Thinking that the meaning of life is one big mysterious question which has one big answer proved to be very wrong. I learned that instead of answering the question of the meaning of life, I should by breaking it down into a series of smaller and utterly unmysterious questions, thus giving a deflationary account of that question.
I started writing about how taking some time to reflect within ourselves is of great importance because that’s how we find out who we truly are. Then I wrote how travelling can make our lives worth living because it makes us more tolerant, resourceful and knowledgeable. After that, I wrote how to manage our emotions, because the just man is not driven by emotions but by reason. Subsequently I wrote how to be tolerant and not impinge on other people’s beliefs because people have a reason to believe in what they believe in. Next I wrote how important it is to have faith in yourself, and this all finally ended up with my conclusion of life being absurd.
I want to thank all of my readers, and I hope that they learned as much about life as I did.
Below are the 7 most important things we have learned in this blog!
1) Reflecting within ourselves is the only way to know who we really are.
2)Traveling makes us more tolerant, resourceful and knowledgeable.
3) A wise man must be driven by reason and not by emotion
4) Even if we have figured it all out and our beliefs are far superior to other peoples’, we should not impinge on them because everyone has a reason to believe in what they believe in.
5) Having faith in yourself leads to one of the most important asset we should have: self-confidence
6) . Our life cannot be meaningful or purposeful if we live according to standards that society set up. We must stay true to our character and live up to our own values.
7) We must accept the absurdity of life. And we must accept our faith of never truly understanding life and its meaning.
Thank you, and farewell!