It always bothered me to know what I want. It’s pretty easy to pinpoint exactly the things that I don’t want but knowing and maybe finding what I want’s something I never really learned how to do.
I never really wanted to study or really do anything. I can remember most of my childhood I just enjoy sitting and just staring at nothing. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I enjoy a lot of things. But does enjoying something directly translate to you wanting it? or is it just some sort of reaction a mind or body does to certain combination of things the mind or body ‘matches’ to. Hm. I don’t really know. My father usually tell me hard to stop not doing anything. To at least play if I don’t want to study or to do home stuff. Of course I knew I didn’t want him to be mad at me so of course I tried all of those things. I never knew what I wanted. But if there’s something near to it, Since grade 3 I’ve been really fascinated with the possibility of ending this life and knowing if there’s something else. Or at least if there isn’t. I wouldn’t have to do anything anymore. I mean. Of course I’m scared of pain but most times the idea of me ending really fascinates me. I’m not sad about life. It’s just. Knowing that this ends eventually kinds of makes it more interesting for me.
Eventually I needed to go to college and while most of my batch mates were worried about what course they will take. I just went on and chose randomly. Some school offered some sort of scholarship or discount because of our entrance exam scores for a computer engineering course. And yeah. I took it.
But yeah, eventually I dropped out because I didn’t really like being in school (and bec I didn’t attend most of my classes) but my mom really believed in education so I had to continue doing school (without failing this time) so I transferred to another school and shifted to Computer Science.
Once there I tried to find a way to pass all my subjects without really having to go to all my classes everyday. I rarely liked anything in the school. But of course, throughout, I had to learn a lot of things. The whole curriculum was about solving problems. Every sem we had both theology (which I aced, heh) and math courses. Algeb, Trigo, Calc, uck. All of those things constantly. I guess now I realize it was because we needed to be trained to constantly constantly constantly balance equations to solve problems.
I never really enjoyed the academic subjects except maybe for 2 minor ones. Philosophy and Humanities. Those were the only 2 subjects where I remember the name of my professors and what they taught me. most of the things there never really fit in the world of logic that we were trained for but I really really enjoyed everything about those two subjects.
And I guess that reflected when I started to work. 5 years of being in school to constantly constantly constantly balance equations eventually drove me to always being skeptical about all things. To really try and see and explore every factor before declaring a process or method to solve something.
This is why I guess Simon Sinek’s Begin with the Why and Nietczhe and Sartre’s works resonated with me so much. Existence should have meaning. Should have purpose. A design. I was obsessed with balance and balance can’t be created without understanding every purpose of every part.
To me back then. Everything needs to have a purpose. A design. A reason for being. That’s the only thing that could make anything have any sort of sense. It’s like a translation of how you choose the right combination of codes and functions to make sure a program or an app would work effectively. Which was always the thing about work. Effectivity and efficiency.
Eventually the obsession for balance translated to an obsession for purpose. Which was supposed to be a nice thing for people who knew what they really wanted. But I still didn’t. I never did. Everything needed to have meaning with me and with me not wanting anything and my appreciation of death, I knew that my stay here would be limited and it’d be a better use of that limited time to have a purpose that affects more people than me. Probably those people who’d know what they want.
And for the past 5 to 7 years, for me that was to work for something about the future. It still is. For me I think dying working on something that hopefully builds more ways for people to have more options would make my existence more essential since I don’t really know what I want. It would make my absence of desire have purpose.
It made sense. I threw my job at a global company because I didn’t see their mission statement say that they are building something for the future. After my first job I kinda got a managerial role in this new company back then. The pay was nice. The perks were nice. I was being vetted to have a ‘nice’ career. They were really generous.
But I didn’t find meaning. So I resigned and found a job at a publishing company who makes education materials. They said their mission is ‘Para sa Bata, Para sa Bayan’. Back then to me it was a perfect purpose. (Heh, perfect purpose). I applied for a job and got a low paying one where I got to do more stuff than I did my previous one. I actually played 2 roles for 3 years for the same pay.
But it had purpose. So for me, trimming down most of the parts of my life that didn’t have ‘purpose’ like art and music and the things I find fun like friends was an okay choice. Bec I thought ‘hey, it’s okay, you’re doing this work for that mission. You’d probably die but at least you won’t end this existence without meaning’. But eventually I got in too deep where I found that there might not be true honesty behind that mission and it might have been something just done by rich people to make themselves feel better. But the intent was never true.
It. It.. It shattered me. Which I never knew would be possible because I never really had a stake in anything because I never wanted anything and I never believed in anything. I thought nothing can hurt me if I never wanted anything. But Knowing all those things about how false the purpose of all the things I did during that time period. It triggered a skin disease I never knew I had. Apparently psoriasis is triggered by both the environment and how I mentally react around it. I needed to recuperate and reinstall myself so i left and went back to Cubao. Home.
Purpose was supposed to be some sort of validation for existence as a human being. At least for me for the past few years. Without purpose, this might not be ‘life’. It was.
That’s why I often ask new people i meet why they do the things they do. I’ve always been curious about other people’s purpose. But after my stint in education I’ve become quite stingy about grand purposes. Since I’ll never really know if intents were true or not. I can’t quite handle stories of ‘great’ purposes well.
I thought. I think. I think what’s worse than having no purpose is doing something for something we don’t really believe in. A false purpose. A face purpose. I don’t. I can’t. I can’t really handle cheating and being lied to very well.
Fascination with the end had me value time so so preciously. Every waking time can’t ever really be recovered so I’d always rather have truths no matter how ugly or pretty as long as I know they’re truths.
Recently I got to talk to some person who does art. I got curious so I asked why the person does the art. The person said it’s simply as if there’s an opportunity to create something or anything, the person takes it. That the person’s just expressing the person’s self.
Framing those words under the lenses of logic and purpose, it might’ve not made any sense. But then it also made me realize that the obsession on purpose and the need for meaning and the need for all things to have a reason for being stemmed from seeing the world as a world of function. A system. One architected or designed by someone for everything to have a function.
Made me rethink about the lenses I used to view life in general. If everything’s just things with meaning and purpose and function then how free is this life really is? If we’re all designed to function and have meaning that aligns with a ‘great plan’, then is this life really free?
If chaos isn’t in the equation, then how different are we from the lines of codes we use to make computers function as we please.
What if being a free human just means doing what we want without having to mask it with anything grand. We do what we want because we want it. Choosing to do something that we desire. Prior to function. Prior to validation. What if desire is the one thing that actually makes us human vs other forms of life who function by purpose.
Maybe it would sound selfish but that’s assuming that intents are selfish. I guess that’s how desire might be helpful to better understanding the things we do. It shows more truth than anything else. Doing what we desire to do. Not what we think we were designed to do.
Maybe that’s why the devil often gives people the things they need to pursue what they want. Maybe he just wanted to show that the idea of ‘good and evil’ isn’t really about him and god. Maybe it’s about how we humans are the source of the prominence of both sides. Either side exists only because of our desires.
Maybe that’s what life is. An intricate combination of the things we want and its effects on the general scheme of things. Heh. Things.
I guess even if these things were true, it’d still be a challenge to pursue or even make the choice to do what we desire because of how our social structures were designed. Especially when we factor in the social constructs we’ve built as a species. I can’t even say if we got here because we were all designed to be like this or we ourselves developed our structures to be like this. Hm. Interesting. Now I really want to know what I want for myself.
Not really sure about the structure of this entry I just thought I should write these things down. haha. Though. I’m quite having some sort of giggles right now because I suddenly remember my real name’s meaning is ‘God with us’ and my nickname in Urdu means faith. it would have meant I was designed for something very different from my current standpoint. Which of course came from his desires. Which could probably came from how he or the environment he grew up in was designed.
Heh. Design and Desire. Interesting.