There are only two options for all of us: to have or to be.
Part of my bike ride to mosque involves going through a dark alley for at least a minute. Every night as I cruise that path — escaping Gainesville’s bustling nightlife for a few seconds — I look up. The ocean of darkness never fails to leave every fiber of my being quivering in awe.
The stars ceaselessly dance through the night, waiting for someone to appreciate their performance. Millions of people, those of past and forgotten generations, have served as faithful audiences for the celestial beauty. At times, I think the stars must wonder, “When will humans ever learn?”
Inside each of us is a quest for happiness — this much is obvious.
Throughout history, different cultures have tried to come up with ways to get to the elixir of joy.
The way at UF follows that of the other colleges: We wake up and go to class. Come back, eat and finish a WebAssign. Go back to sleep. Repeat five times. The routine takes a fun twist on Friday and Saturday nights. Sunday is recovery from all the sex and booze — after all, it is the Lord’s day of rest.
Our college life is one of radical hedonism, to borrow Erich Fromm’s words. Almost every single action is for immediate gratification.
Fromm said this is “the greatest social experiment ever made to solve the question whether pleasure … can be a satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence.” Unfortunately, the results are “in the negative.”
If anything, we’ve increased in our neediness. Perhaps we assumed our tech advancements would get us somewhere. But the increasingly faster Wi-Fi connections and lighter laptops have hardly increased anyone’s long-term happiness.
“Man has become a superman ... He has failed to rise to the level of superhuman reason which should match that of his superhuman strength… To the degree to which his power grows he becomes more and more a poor man ... a fact which had hitherto been steadfastly denied: the more the superman gains in strength, the poorer he becomes.”
This is what Albert Schweitzer said when he accepted the 1952 Nobel Peace Prize.
The dancing stars above us have seen all our failures and they surely echo the words of Gandhi: “The world has enough for everyone’s need, but not enough for everyone’s greed.” When will humans ever learn this simple concept?
These days, pundits throw different political ideologies at us. They claim if we accept a certain philosophical viewpoint, the world will be bliss. I only wish.
The ancients have always said there are only two options: “to have or to be,” as Fromm put it. If we desire “to have,” our years will be spent stuffing our closets with Marc Jacobs bags and our pockets with the latest iPhones.
But if we choose “to be,” the world will be a different place. “To be” means to lose the “me, me and some more of me” ideology. When you ponder how the sun provides Earth with warmth and how plants grow fruits, you realize everything is in a state of giving. If you want to become your actual self, take heed from nature.
College life is ripe for introspection. When I came to UF, a friend told me something interesting: “What you are by the end of your undergrad years is what you will be for the rest of your life.”
Please don’t make Oscar Wilde’s words — “youth is wasted on the young” — come true. Millions before, just like us, constantly found ways to satisfy their immediate temptations. But a few chose a different route: the one of loving, caring and struggling. This is the only one that is genuinely human.
Zulkar Khan is a UF microbiology senior. His column runs on Wednesdays. A version of this column ran on page 7 on 11/20/2013 under the headline "Only two options: to have or to be"
