On the night of cognitare, one of my friend asked me this question which I thought worth mentioning here.
"What's the point of doing this? We often like to talk about learning and self-developing but has anyone thought about what are we doing this for? In the end when we land into a job that requires our time like this; is this the kind of job/life we want?"
To which, of cos, I answered him accordingly.
But I think he has brought up an interesting point here. Most of the time, we're all so busy with doing things, busy with school work, busy with learning and developing our character. But have we ever thought about what are doing all these for?
Even from this point onwards, our bodies are degenerating day by day. In 30-40 year's time, some of our bodily systems will begin to malfunction. Optimistic or pessimistic, this is a fact that everyone has to face. Death comes to all some day.
Alot of people respond to the death of a loved one like it should never have happened, and many see early deaths as tragic. But the fact remains, death will come and take our physical bodies someday.
Why the desire to learn? We're all going to die someday anyway.
What's the point of learning now?
To support our loved ones? But they will die someday too.
To propogate the human race? Who gave us the responsibility to do so?
Even if we didn't, I'm sure someone would.
I had a friend who truly believed that there was no point in learning so much because it all ended up in death. He lived passively. Although he is really smart, he saw no point in being an achiever. He once told me that it didn't matter if he earned alot or earned a little. He felt it made no difference in the end. Couldn't one be happy earning just enough?
Truly, I couldn't fault him for thinking this way. He's probably more consistent in his thinking and actions than most people actually are. He actually lived out his beliefs compared to most people who lived out their lives inconsistent with their deepest beliefs.
Unless we can answer the why, there is no reason to do the how.Am I being pessimistic? No. I ask questions that need to be answered. Trying to live a life happily without answering its deepest questions is not being optimistic, rather it sounds more like denial.
Now this all sounds really sad and all. It really seems that at this point we're either gonna try to live our life denying this, or find some 'belief' that will help get through it happily. I don't propose either. I have a different light at the end of the tunnel! In fact the answer to this might just lie in nature - the birth of the human foetus.
The foetus of a child in the mother's womb live and feed through umbilical cord. To survive, the child simply had to have constant food being fed through the umbilical cord. But yet, the foetus over time begins to develop limbs. This is interesting, because the foetus does not need limbs to survive in the womb. The limbs of the foetus were nonetheless developed because someday, it would be put to use. Someday it would emerge from the womb to become a walking human being.
Do us humans need character, wisdom and knowledge to live? We only need to eat, drink and breathe to survive. But inherently, we know that the development of character, wisdom, knowledge is 'good'. Want it or not, even as our physical bodies degenerate and die off someday, but there is this part of us, the consciousness, the character, the mind that is growing and developing everyday.
Is it possible that we are in another 'womb'? Is our character, knowledge like the limbs of the foetus; someday coming to use in a great way? What greater entity would we 'emerge' into? Like a baby in the womb, it is a question that we cannot answer now. (Imagine you telling a 5 month old foetus about why his legs are for; he obviously won't understand)
But yet we'll see, won't we?
