Justify Your Existence

Justify Your Existence

Samuel Bird

Last night, my siblings and I all gathered for a meal. In my sister’s small and humble apartment, years of stressors and shared suffering climaxed in a warm and tender celebration. The food was wonderful for the budget and the company was priceless. There was tension between me and a sister that I have a strained relationship with, but it was kept cordial. My sister's boyfriend brought out his old guitar and handed it to me. I began to fret a little improv in E major until I finally felt comfortable enough to sing a few songs. We went through a few classics, a few that were sentimental to our family, and a few that I had written and they knew the words to. During the last of the songs that seemed to bring peace to a troubled family, a cry in the night wrung out. Living directly next to the police station, we quickly heard sirens and saw lights through the window and dancing up the walls. They didn’t head down the road, but stopped right outside of her apartment building as more and more of them poured in. We headed out and began to talk to all the neighbors, but no one knew what had happened. I spoke with law enforcement who in turn informed me what transpired. A man had stopped next to the river. His car had broken down and he was yelling and bitter. He walked toward the river, and then out onto the thin ice. Another man walked by just in time to see him walk so far out that he fell through the ice. No matter his original intentions, the man had changed them and the shock of the cold water prompted shrieks of yelling for help. The river he was in looked smooth as glass on top, but the current could pull you down, and volcanic rock could smash you. This river took the lives of many people I know including my father’s uncle who he loved. The man slipped below the surface and back until he was under the ice. Even now, I can’t help but feel the desperation and regret he must have felt. I attempted to help look, sat there in patience, and tried to console the howling widow when she arrived. As I approached her, all these grand ideas I purport and share in these articles and books were dwarfed by her pain. All I could think to say was that I hoped she felt some of the love I had for her. I had the most vital assessment of my career before the sun rose the next day, and had to leave. 

This experience prompted a waking up of memories and the people that made them. When I was twelve years old, my mother informed me that the cousin I had spent much of my time growing up with, had taken a bottle of pills and was in the emergency room. My mother tried to drink herself to death and nearly succeeded when she coupled it with pills herself. My father was pretty open about putting a gun in his mouth and holding it there, but I could never tell what was true or what was useful for him. The rest of my siblings had experiences with suicide, but they each were silent about these struggles as they didn’t want to pass them on. I held the hand as the woman who helped raise me and her “do not resuscitate” order applied to the coma she had fallen into and the plug was pulled. I had a friend like a brother who lived with my family for some time. We would get into trouble together and try to survive. We had a disagreement and didn’t see each other. Sometime during that time, he had shot himself, although there was talk of it perhaps being a homicide because of his dealings with organized crime. These are great examples of a horrible dilemma, one I hope you never have to consider. Why do I then? Because while I hope you won’t, I worry that you will. Psychology has coopted the question of suicide, but I think philosophy has a few things to say, and perhaps is the rightful place of such a question. It can make sense to place this question under the umbrella of psychology as it seems to be a failing of the organism. Current ideas suggest it had an evolutionary role to self-select one from a tribe. Each of these people felt that they were contaminated and burdening others with their pain. This tells us why this phenomenon perhaps happens, but it does not give a value statement on whether or not it should. You could steal values from another medium to then undergird the effort to keep people alive, but in my time, some governments are rolling out medically assisted suicide. Why not cease existing if we can identify a desire? Sometimes we have a goal in mind of what we want to find out, and it skews our process. I want to make it clear, that is exactly what is going on. I want to give you a reason to live, and I don’t mind bending the factual or even dipping into delusion to get it. To start this foray into grounding a yes to life, let’s demarcate the question into two halves. The first is the value given to the world, and the second is the value given to the person at hand. Can you justify your existence? Is existence worth it?

Why must we justify our existence? Reality is harsh and seemingly unbending. The mind’s extraction of value from it is incredibly finite. If you have a plot of land, plant your seeds, and gather in your crop, there will be so many variables that mitigate your harvest. The amount of land accessible, the amount of seeds, the quality of soil, and the extent of water. This is not even to speak of natural phenomena such as non-ideal weather patterns or yourself dying before the harvest. No matter how you slice and dice it, we live in a universe that may or not be infinite, but what is accessible to us certainly is limited. This gives this world we live in a transactional quality. If I want a certain degree of value from life, I must also put in that value. No matter the desires and wishes of the heart, if no labor derives value from the world, it will not be had. This limited quality also means that there is a cost of opportunity in the value. If there is a minuscule harvest and I eat my fill, perhaps my family will not have enough to eat. While I brought the food about more than my child, my values would not permit me to consume all I wanted with no concern for their needs. This same dilemma is at the heart of most political feuds of my day. It is clear that receiving value is in need of a direct relationship with the parties and activities that brought it about. However, if I have and another needs, could there be merit in filling this need? The point is not to solve this dilemma but to show it. As you persist across time, the value you necessitate and thusly extract could be used for someone else. Perhaps someone less miserable and pathetic. What then does your life bring into the world to substantiate its cost? This is worth meditation and introspection. A strong response to it would find one with a justification for existence. There are two categories of answers you will find to this question. The first is the utility. This is what value you bring into the world. The second is the intrinsic value. This is the value you posses by the mere fact of your existence. Perhaps the people that you love need you, or perhaps you are such that you warranted love in the first place. As I am biased here, I will say it is likely that both are true. At the very least, I love you. You not being in the world, would make it that much dimmer for me. There is at least one value you have, but you will no doubt need to continue on this line of questioning. 

Once your value is realized such that existence in the world is appropriate, we must then ask: Is existence worth it? Are you exacting the value you need from your existence? You making the world a brighter place is only so helpful, if it is not a place you want to be. Let’s go back to the basics of what value is. It does not exist in the world but in the mind. Yet, it still has great weight, or at least does to the mind that possesses it. While it resides in the mind, it is not arbitrary. If I asked you to simply and suddenly change your values such that your life was worth living, it is doubtful that this would solve the issue. Rather, a careful look at life would be more appropriate. As I talked about in my article on gratitude, our lives are a coming and going of value. In the form of physical resources, ideas, or love, things come and go. If we are not careful to see them arrive in our lives, their departure will not be soothed by the glee that we ever had it. Between deep breaths and a clear mind, consider the value measured in your mind that has come from your life. In my short story “A Click and then Nothing Forever,” a scientist gives a reason why we should all not exist. He says that we should refuse that which brings about pain and existence brings about all pain. Outside of his fallacy of composition, I would disagree that life has merit based on the joy it brings us. While I hope there is great utility in the joy, beauty, and meaning you perceive from your existence, I do not think negating such should negate you. What intrinsic value do you then possess for yourself? Your existence is you perceiving and intaking a series of phenomena and deciding their value. You know how it has gone up until now and perhaps it has been enjoyable, but it would not be necessary that the experiences you have had up until now will continue. Perhaps a part of you that ties you to this life must die, but not you entire. This leads to the greatest two reasons I have ever found for living. The first is a sense of curiosity. While things may be miserable and horrific, there is mystery in if it will continue to be so. The second is the closest thing to a meaning for life or rather an aim, I can identify. The striving. Your blood didn’t well up in ancient pools or fall from the heavens just to be spilled because of lack of happiness. Your mind and frame are not made to bring about light and frivolous whimsey. Like a scraggly tree grown into the side of a cliff I saw recently, you are made for the struggle and you are built for it well. Find heroism and a narrative in your survival, but please survive. 

In my time, there are many naysayers to life’s merit. I was flirting with a young woman some months ago when she told me she was interested but wanted me to know she didn’t want to have children. A why came from my lips when she informed me how deeply miserable existence was. It was limited, bitter, and fleeting. It was better for her that it never was. This antinatalism is not alien to me and a read of Schopenheur and a relationship with my own suffering makes it convincing. I then asked her, if life was such that it was not worth bringing others into, if it is such that it prompted an exit. She shrugged her shoulders as pained eyes said what was not socially appropriate. I sought to comfort her, but this was a deep philosophical dilemma engraved in her mind. This anti-life mentality is bursting at the seams in my age. It leads to patterns of behavior that reinforce its principles. I considered and brooded over her argument until I realized what I knew about this woman. She was born in an age, in the country, and in a position where she had one of the very easiest lives to have ever been lived. Why then when her ancestors fought wars, plague, and famine, was her existence so hated? 

This afternoon, I plunged into the icy cold water of that same river. As I held my breath underwater, I felt something come alive in me. It was the animalistic organism within me fighting for life. I held my breath as the shooting pain of freezing water covered my body. I counted the moments I held my breath, as I didn’t see it as something to be cursed. It was, to me, a treasure. How divine was it that I was miserable, uncomfortable, and alone, but existing for all of it? I lifted my head above the surface to see a beaver damn and cliffside covered in moss. It was clear I was not alone in my desire to live, simply because it was the only option. I lowered my head below the slowly lapping waves and held my breath again. This body of mine was in the environment it was designed to be. One of fighting back against elements. I thought to that man who fell into this same river many miles downstream. A tear from my eye joined the water I was under as I thought of him. I wish I could have talked to him. I know words may have failed me as they did when I spoke to his widow, but I wished to God I could try. If he didn’t see value in his life, I would have begged him to borrow the value I see in him. I was reminded that the same current that was bringing me to life took his. I wished him well and prayed a prayer for what simple little I thought I could. I dried myself off and went on a drive. The winding country road weaved between that same dangerous river and the cliffs that nearly took my life during many climbs. Each seemed serene all the same and was nothing more than a probe for me to answer. Up ahead came a bend in the road just as it came to a summit. Straight ahead of the bend was a dropoff to the river and rocks below. I pulled my car over and got out. I looked up at it as I realized the immense danger I had survived. I came to this spot many times as a young man. I sat at the bottom of the hill, knowing that if I floored the throttle, I could achieve a speed great enough to fly off the cliff and from my life. The sun was setting in the valley below as I stared at that land that was nearly the last sight I would ever see. I teared up and began to pray again, but out loud and with a shaky voice. Between all the skeptical, random, and chaotic, my life was a gift to me. One that I was grateful to have. I know I have caused others pain and I know I have felt some truly cutting pains. However, I know I have been able to do some good, and I have enjoyed parts of my existence. Even if not, I am reminded others value my life because they just do. Back to where and when I was, I realized that I had somehow done it. I had justified my existence and made it worth it all.