Existence and Choice

Existence, existentialism and existential crisis are some of the words that we hear being thrown around casually. It is not often that we stop to think about what those terms mean or what it means to exist. When it comes to existentialism, we are all certain of one thing (hopefully) that is the fact that we exist. A lot of times we would have encountered situations where we feel completely lost and we feel a sense of isolation or meaninglessness. That is precisely what existentialism says, the world itself is not meaningful but we as individuals have the capacity to shape the world around us to derive a purpose or meaning. Everything that we do in our daily life is relevant only because we have chosen to assign that significance to it. We as human beings have all the freedom to do as we please which is starkly evident in what we have done to the world. Choice is what determines who we truly are. We choose to study, read, eat, wear only certain things, all of which contributes to a meaningful whole. However, with choice comes responsibility and we humans are only too happy to blame the consequences of our actions on others. We tend to escape from responsibility because we do not want to be held accountable for our actions. Often we feel frustration and anxiety with our own selves due to the fact that we thwart responsibility for actions that our conscience is aware of. The meaning, purpose and choice of actions are all subjective in existentialism. We are capable of perceiving our needs, desires and actions of our personal lives and only we can assign meaning to it. Each time we think about the reason and purpose of our existence and or the goodness versus the badness of life, we get a step closer to understanding ourselves and our relationship with the world around us better.

 Image by cocoparisienne from Pixabay