On Existentialism

Finding purpose and faith when the world feels too big

I skipped every high school dance but one. I’d browse Pinterest for the perfect sequined mini dress, imagine myself radiating confidence as I strutted through those clunky gym doors, and twirl around in front of my mirror. That is, until I ultimately decided there was too much potential for judgment, and those dresses never saw the outside of my bedroom walls. I’d spend weeks moving back and forth: do I go to homecoming or spend a quiet weekend with my family? Do I go to prom, or find a friend to go to dinner with who will “get” it? This always resulted in the latter.

What if I regret not going to prom for the rest of my life? When I look back on my time in high school, won’t this be at the forefront of my regrets— a missed cornerstone of adolescence? I’d talk to anyone willing to listen: my mom, friends, colleagues, and high school counselor.

I graduated a little over a year ago and have not thought even once about this thing that caused an unyielding cycle of neuroticism that I willingly embraced every single year. Suddenly, it’s gone. In its place sits a current that seems to have followed me into young adulthood, deeming life both plentiful and hollow. A current that greets me each morning as I open my eyes, something I can finally put a name to: existentialism.

I wouldn’t call myself a religious person. I haven’t been to church in years, and after taking a philosophy class that explored cosmogonies from around the world, belief started to feel heavier; a decision that required proof. Which worldview should I trust to shape the way I live? Which one should hold meaning for me?

I see that tension everywhere: in the way I write, and the way I (try to) make even the smallest choices. Every reaction and emotion I feel somehow relates to the idea that it will ultimately provide purpose to my life, which I have yet to define as important in so many ways.

It feels like a privilege in many regards to live with a plethora of open doors and this belief that anything is possible. Though this feeling of infinite choice is a tough path to follow, not knowing which door is worth walking through.

Several people close to me have pointed this out to me as perhaps a quiet calling, maybe that I’m meant to find home in religion, start going to church, or pick up the bible. This longing for meaning sounds spiritual, and there are days it feels like faith in something beyond myself, but it’s not. I don’t move through my life with this as a foundation, nor does it provide me with moral guidance or community. Rather, it creates a perspective that cracks the door to some form of religious practice if that day ever comes.

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“I am constantly trying to communicate something incommunicable, to explain something inexplainable, to tell about something I only feel in my bones and which can only be experienced in those bones”

- Franz Kafka

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As I work toward a degree and try to conclude what I will major in, where I want to work, and what that job will mean in the larger context of my life, it all feels… existential. Like, if it doesn’t amount to something revolutionary, it’s not worth doing. And yes, I am aware that this is completely asinine.

I’m sitting at my desk in the corner of my living room, and the window is open. I have two papers to start, 62 pages of reading to complete, and several analyses that won’t write themselves. I need to remind myself: it is important. Each word doesn’t need to solve world peace or share the history of the universe; it can be an excerpt about the Victorian Internet or Confucian philosophy. It can be mundane, ordinary, and not connected to the larger sum of my life.

Here’s what I missed about all of those dances that I never went to: they didn’t matter. My absence didn’t amount to an unfulfilled childhood, it meant that I didn’t want to go. And that’s okay.

All this waiting for the perfect moment to announce itself with certainty that it matters, all this ambivalence, guarantees me nothing. It’s more uncomfortable to hover in a place of wanting to do big things, and simultaneously fearing that it will never be big enough. I still see my life through a goal of dreaming big, though I am constantly reframing this idea that it doesn’t have to all feel so monumental. That maybe I can find meaning in being a sum of what I have— sequined dress or not.

With love always,

Olivia Jean