Ascertaining the Mass of My Being
It has been a long time coming, this entry. I had written the first part of this blog a while ago but the thought seemed unfinished, so I did not publish it. After revisiting it recently and concluding it, I figured I could put it out there in the world for further analysis and feedback.
Today I wish to use this platform to address a personal conundrum. What is the weight of an individual’s life? This question nags at me of late forcing me to re-evaluate various aspects of my life in conjunction with it. Who am I? Is it defined by what I do for a living or where I come from; or is it the people who are a part of my life, my family, my friends, my loved one that dictates my path? Is it my character, my personality, the way I go about treating and dealing with all aspects of my life or is it the simple question of where I went to school and what degree do I hold? Too many questions and even many more answers, it seems. The mass of a persons existence, what a loaded idea! Some people will perhaps claim that the answers are “relative”, meaning there is no right or wrong answer. This, I assume, means that each individual holds the answer to their questions based solely upon their circumstances, their perception and their variance in life. Another possible answer could be that it is the “sum” or “combination” of all things and that no one thing holds more value than the other. This seems like a more diplomatic approach that is meant to appease a middle ground, I suspect. And then there is the idea that there IS no way of knowing the answer, which is to say that we human beings lack the oversight or the insight to actually grasp an answer that satiates all concepts of what the answer to such a loaded question ought to be able to do.
It is a slippery slope perhaps, excuses made to deviate oneself from that actual crux of the question at hand. The question, basically, is: What is the weight of my life? not to be confused with “What is the meaning of my life?”. According to Ockham’s Razor, “The simplest explanation is always the best explanation”. But what IS the simplest explanation precisely? Let us start by shifting away from the “whats” and the “whys”. An individual is born; depending on the circumstances, they have a certain upbringing that carves out their personality and who they become. From thereon, once again, based on the resources available to them, they are inclined to walk down a certain path that lays out their “careers” and life thereon.
The only consistent element to the scenarios briefly discussed above is the “circumstances” of us all. There is no denying that our experiences and the environment impacts who we are. So perhaps that is where we have to begin our inquisition. Circumstances. A vague definition of it will be the kind of family you are born into, whether rich or poor, Christian or Muslim, and where you are in this world. All these define your circumstances based upon which you will have the opportunities and resources made available to you. The process varies, of course, given the undefined elements that participate in every individual’s life, but circumstances are a more or less concrete thought and attribute of what defines us.
I cannot help but cite the fact that a discussion exists that touches a facet of this in the realm of psychology trying to better understand and explain the impact of our nurture in comparison with nature. That being said, lets focus on the query at hand. Weight of my life; Having put the questions in the first part of this blog out there for my own evaluation and analysis, I went about for a while, trying better to understand where the value and importance of the question lies. And then I realized that the one thing that was also a concrete attribute would be the pseudo consequence of circumstance: accomplishment.
Success is defined by many in various forms and ways, and so is accomplishment. To use the term lightly and very vaguely for the purpose of our investigation, I feel it safe to say that accomplishment protrudes the answer and solution of the question to a certain extent. Simply put, you are what you have to show for yourself. Even though the answer may appear simple, it is, unfortunately, not all encompassing and with its limitations only satisfies a certain element of my initial dilemma. It does succeed in ascertaining that the outcome or consequence is pivotal. However, it still leaves ample room for questioning as to what is the necessary or justified “outcome”. As I said earlier, the questions are many and the answers even more. There is a certain loop that seems to entail pertaining to this question, thus, leading me to believe that the best way is to perhaps highlight the answers that best fit my, or anyone else’s, particular “circumstances” and help better define their lives and accomplishments to them and those around them. So, in essence, perhaps the weight of a man’s being is what he decides to make it be; think of it as a question with multiple choices as the answers, what you decide the answer to be, defines who you are to the person who is evaluating and all these are factors undefined.
U r still the same philosophical being that I knew almost 14 years ago.
There’s this thing i read in Philosophy 101 called the “Bundle Theory”, which states that identity is often misinterpreted in terms of singularity. An individual’s identity is like a bundle of sticks, each stick representing a memory or past experience. Throughout our life, we keep gathering new sticks and dropping remotely old ones.
Whether or not our loved ones dictate our path is a completely different discussion – determinism vs. free will. I prefer not to tread this inconclusive path unless of course I’m drunk