Existential Optimism

CBT is finished. I scored intermediate middle on my language test, which is among the highest. I had the chance to be selected to give the speech to my fellow volunteers, but the situation was such that I was but a single set of white orbs in a sea of other white orbs, bobbing up and down to the rhythmic waves of another person’s words. The training sessions are over, and when we go to our sites, it is for real - we will find ourselves in another ocean - the ocean of another culture, and it really is sink or swim. I don’t have a safety raft, I don’t have wings or any sort of device to keep myself afloat but my own mind and stubbornness to not give up. I am, in a way, free to decide how I will interact with my own community, and what sort of lessons I will give. I have always found it strange at how heavy freedom weighs on one’s shoulders.

It is strange, this feeling. Like I can do anything, but the fact of this knowledge sometimes paralyzes me. I am fairly certain that it was Sartre, maybe, who spoke of Existential Despair. That moment of your life when you seem to see beyond the people and things that you normally see and realize that every thing, every person, every action that you have taken or not taken, is all but a part of an interconnected whole, that in itself it also empty. Everyone’s actions, both mundane and supernatural, repeats itself utterly throughout all of time into ocean upon ocean, reflecting itself into itself throughout all of time. I believe Sartre described it in layman’s terms as staring into the void. In a way, I feel like I have been looking into that void the past few days.

However, I am not frightened by it. I look into the fact that we are all, in fact, empty, as a means of incredible hope and optimism. Yes, my actions, in and of themselves, are but a part of the whole interconnectedness of all beings around me. Yes, my thoughts are but the few drops that have fallen onto my mind from the fountainhead of another being. Yes, everyone around me is going to be waiting to see what I can or cannot do, and I am looking at everyone in my town wondering what they expect of me. And it is the fact of that emptiness, the fact that we are all in this together, so to speak, that makes me so very proud and happy to be here.

I can do anything. That ocean of one’s life can be completely disrupted by a single stone that sends ripples through itself. I can do anything. Somebody can just as easily disrupt the entire ocean of my being, to where my own reflection becomes undeterminable, and I am left with shards of who I once was. I can do anything. Even after it all settles and I think that the ocean of my being has become what it once was, I am forced to acknowledge that the little stone has forever altered it.

The same applies to anybody: You can do anything. You can become anything. All it takes is one little stone.