The Source of Being
Right now, I’m supposed to be writing a scientific research paper about how interface morphology affects plexcitons. But I’m being very avoidant about it. I’m procrastinating, and there’s probably a good reason for it. So, I went to an empty room and dumped all my thoughts on a whiteboard. Upon deeper inquiry into my mental state, I think I might be afraid of something or of losing something. All things considered, writing a paper like this should be easy for me — I shouldn’t be this daunted. It’s a lot of work, for sure, but it’s not impossible. Perhaps here lies one of my problems — I probably have a profound misunderstanding of the word easy and mistook it for anything that is possible. But there’s something more. There’s also this eerie feeling that somehow, I couldn’t feel my work anymore that somehow there’s no love in the words that I type on the screen. Where did it go? Love couldn’t just vanish in a day. There’s something that’s bothering me, and it’s undermining my ability to function — or at least, I think so.
So, I began to write down, “what am I?” With sloppy strokes, I wrote that I’m a physicist. Then I immediately cleared the board because that’s actually not true at a fundamental level. Before that, I am first and foremost, a human being; who just happened to do physics things because it allowed me to chase my curiosity wherever it goes. It’s a role I play, but it’s not who I am. Then I thought about what it’s like to be human, and I realized that I’m not as clear on this as I’d hoped I would. It took me a bit of thinking until eventually, I found myself staring at a wall of questions and no answers.
Most of them are familiar questions because these are the questions that have accompanied me for most of my life. It was like finding a box of old photographs of old relatives I barely remember but were all supporting my journey into adulthood somewhere in the background. Yes, these are the questions that have guided the way I live my life, but I’ve been ignoring them for some time now. But now that they re-surfaced into my awareness, I’m considering that these questions may be the source of our being. The spring pools from which we derive most of what drives us.
Just like everybody in this world, I grew up in a society heavily dependent on hope. I grew up hoping for greater, better things and formulated grand schemes and ambitions for the future. I thought initially that these are the things that shape who I am because they are, after all, my primary source of motivation, which ultimately determined my actions. But in a deeper sense, one could still ask, “what made me want to hope for such and such and aim for this and that?” Upon closer introspection, I found that even these hopes and dreams are still rooted in something more primal — and these are the questions.
These questions come from our encounters with life and are born mainly from our innate need to make sense of everything that happens to us. In our struggle to survive and attempt to figure out a way to live a meaningful life, we encounter moments of lucidity where the emptiness and absurdity of existence bares itself. These are the moments when these questions start to take form and reveal themselves to us. At first, these questions has the effect of eliciting a growing sense of existential anxiety that one naturally tries to run away from. The methods vary, but it’s common in our society to be consoled by hope or by adopting a “truth” that fends off the rawness of these questions. Eventually, we get used to the comfort and safety afforded by our psychological stilts, and we ultimately forget the question. Invariably leaving us with only empty vestiges of what was once the truest parts of who we are.
Now I remember. Love did not disappear. I ran away.
