Ever since the dawn of human reason, we have grappled with the question: to be or not to be? In light of the constant turmoil in which man finds his inner self battling against the ever-encroaching rise of entropy, one searches for its meaning in the stretches of the grand abyss of emptiness that life offers in its predispositions. Ironically, it is the whisper of our mortality that teaches us how to breathe. To know that the story will end one day adds value to our experiences independent of its characterization with our emotional senses. I tend to view the conscious experience of life itself, one which is not influenced by our preconceptions as a happy experience. Let us imagine Sisyphus happy.
This blog is about a life event of mine and how it completely changed the outlook of my perception. Like everybody on earth, I encountered a phase of deep existential crisis and suffered through severe depression. But I am fortunate enough that I lived through it. I have made the choice to wholeheartedly believe that the physical universe is completely deterministic and that we have absolutely no choice of our own. The ‘I’ that I refer to is merely an audience of the play of my conscious experiences and the thoughts that I experience are not really mine but merely the byproducts of pre-existing initial conditions.
Interestingly, one can argue that even if the universe is deterministic, one cannot completely predict the future with full confidence. Suppose determinism is real and the only way we can be sure of this is when we have an explicit rule of evolution of the universe and we know the initial conditions in its entirety. Now, consider this thought experiment- you are given with the choice of either eating an apple or an orange and you make this choice at 8 am in the morning. If you were able to predict your choice beforehand using a perfectly deterministic theory and unimaginable computing power, you would still have choice to make change which is paradoxical. One can imagine more pathological circumstances, but this is tangential to my narrative.
So despite my belief in complete determinism, since I cannot know my future, I still have agency. In other words, our ignorance is indistinguishable from free will. This is comforting to my identity. Moreover, I would argue that the question of determinism is a matter of belief since our scientific doctrine doesn’t allow us to make exact claims as such due to our inability to perfectly justify a hypothesis with experiments. So, this cannot be scientific but as with every other belief it matters because it influences your actions and thought processes. I have made my choice. Now, having demonstrated agency from my belief it makes sense to talk about the choice of “to be or not to be” which I highlighted earlier.
Last summer I had many novel experiences, but one event particularly captivated my imagination. I went for a trip with my friend, and it was the last day of our journey and our final destination. The sun was about to set, and we found ourselves standing on the beach at the outskirts of a huge crowd meeting the endless sea. We were immersed in thoughts contemplating the horizon with the setting sun occasionally peeking through the clouds summoning a graceful twilight. I saw a young boy right in front of me, blissfully playing with sand, pouring it into a nearby pit with his tiny bare hands. My friend commented that kids do meaningless things and still get happy. I argued that to a greater intelligence our actions could be as meaningless. Then I thought well, maybe things change when you get older and you cannot find fulfillment doing small things in life as you did as a kid. But then another thought struck me – perhaps we are like that kid only and we are here to fill the pit with sand and be happy about it. Maybe we will never be able to fill it and there might not be enough sand in the entire earth to fill the pit but anyway we are going to do it without any complaints and take pleasure in it.
The child didn’t know why he was doing what he was doing — but he smiled as the sand slipped through his fingers. In that moment, I saw myself. And I chose, not with freedom, but with awareness, to keep pouring sand into the pit.
Let’s imagine Sisyphus happy. I do.
What's in a shape 