In many ways, Spring semester has been my most important one so far at UF. This semester will always be remembered as the time I had my existential crisis — where every action I performed was basked in this vague notion that I was following an empty path. I was troubled by the meaning of life.
I used to be “that guy” obsessed with going to law school, with becoming “successful” in the traditional sense and with climbing the ladder of my own ambition. No longer. Within the course of a week, things I once found obvious became unclear. The concrete steps of my ambition faded away.
I abruptly disabused myself of the notion that becoming a lawyer meant performing the tasks on shows like “Law and Order.” I began to realize that the eventual path I would take actually meant slaving away for hundreds of hours every month, writing legal briefs and reading countless pages of arbitrary case law.
And “the law” became just that — arbitrary, a man-made creation. I asked myself, what was the law but random rules conceived by society? Was there fundamental truth? Everything I had ever wanted to do in life became plagued by the questions: What does it mean? Will this bring me the best possible life I can live?
What caused all this fuss, you might ask?
Two distinct events caused the change that will go, frustratingly to readers, I’m sure, unexplained in this column. As dramatic as it sounds, those events forced me to re-examine my entire reason for existing.
Students (myself included) often have lofty goals of changing the world that are encouraged by our parents and professors. However, the cynical truth behind this encouragement is the depressing fact that most of us will end up hating our work. Fifty-five percent of Americans, to be exact, are unsatisfied at their jobs. That’s the amount of Americans who perhaps never asked themselves these fundamental questions.
And so, here we are. Society has become the most in-debt, addicted, obese, medicated adult cohort in U.S. history. Families return home from jobs they hate to their boxy suburban neighborhoods, plop down on the couch and stare at the numbing glow of a television screen for hours before taking a sleeping pill so they can avoid the torture of their regrets keeping them awake at night.
Billboards on the side of the road scream reassurance at us that whatever we’re doing is OK. We bury our noses in our iPhones and plug in our earphones to escape. We humans continue to find ever more creative ways to bombard our senses, seeking some sort of fulfillment. Dazzling lights flash downtown while we consume numbing amounts of alcohol and drugs, all while music blasts in our ears.
But here I am asking these questions: What does it all mean? What is truly important? I’m afraid I don’t have the answers, but I do think they lie somewhere in nature. Which is why it became my new goal to buy a 30-foot sailboat and travel the world with the person I love. Which is why, along with my revelations about meaning, the idea came to me that living and existing as a sentient being on this planet is overwhelmingly rapturous.
Take a moment to let that idea detonate in your mind. Take a moment to realize that being alive is such an incredible wonder, that the very idea of you taking a breath is breathtaking. Take a moment to unplug your headphones, stop texting and notice the newly born osprey chirping from above or the welcome smokiness of a distant forest fire.
Take a moment to ask the right questions and marvel.
Garrett Bruno is a political science sophomore at UF. His column appears on Thursdays.
