What's the point?
I tilted my head up and looked into his pupils and felt a warm, wet tingling under my sleeves, in spite of the air conditioned room and the chill of night. My question was not unique and I was certain he had heard it countless times before, but it felt like an insult, like a direct blow to everything they stood for, and prepared myself to be condemned for the rest of the night. Without changing my expression, I asked unflinchingly, without lifting my eyes from Swamiji's gaze: "Scientifically, how do we know god exists?"
The answer I received was simple. Logic can be incorrect and manipulative, but God existed because everything has a cause and an effect. If the universe was made, something created it, which could theoretically be created by something else, but in the end it was created by something infinite. The tension in my forehead eased, but beneath the surface neurons were still firing rapidly, causing the throb in my head to shift from the front to the back. "Then what's our purpose?"
None. "If god had a reason, he wouldn't be infinite." I was told warmly, in the same voice my teacher uses when explaining that the mass and acceleration of my cat is codependent on the sun's radius and this fact was the simplest to understand. I didn't understand it then, but whether god exists or not, life is purposeless.
While existentialism was first introduced to me in 4000 Weeks: Time Management for Mortals I did not understand its implications on a broader scale. It means that there is no necessity for humans to innovate scientifically, other than to satisfy themselves. The arts don't have to be condemned as a "waste of time." After all, we were designed to live in communities.
It only made sense that I was here to help "unlock potential." I want to lift people up, educate them, give them basic security so they can focus on the sciences or humanities to their discretion. No one should be made to work 10-12 hours a day, whether in the US or other countries. They should be able to explore.
After entering a relationship, I lost sight of my purpose in favor of taking care of the people right in front of me; family, girlfriend, and friends.
After I left, I began to understood the notion of a self.
It seemed so selfish to pursue the "self" and to understand myself. Call it Stockholm Syndrome, but the college application process invited me to consider for the first time, that the role of self is not "selfish." You have to understand yourself to understand people to optimize yourself to help other people. Maybe then the idea of expressing feelings or emotions, writing literature isn't so revolting to me. Maybe I'll even publish a guide on how to write your college essays once it all blows over and finally explain what "show don't tell" means.
Moving further into the season of college applications, I have to focus on my essays, but I've cut a lot of my regular life out. I can no longer participate in hackathons or write code as often as I used to. I already shut Aquarc down and my co-founder is too busy for us to do outreach for Codeabode, which we so desperately need.
I think I'll spend more of my time reading books and understanding the world around me. I'll try a soft introduction into fiction, although it still seems like a waste of time deep down. I'll focus on playing my guitar, and maybe working on some code as required by Codeabode.
After second semester hits, I'll allow myself to go to hackathons and events and travel more.
Although I understand the role the arts play into our world today, I only feel the tingle in the back of my head and the lightened pressure over my heart in engineering. There is no feeling like the energy and determination I derive from watching the firefighter plane in Planes fly straight up in the face of gravity, where the movie shouts "Torque, torque, torque" and the rapidly turning gears grinding to a halt in my imagination. Because I know I can do better.
Tags: reflection, growth