Sartre is an existentialist philosopher. Meaning that he
believed that our lives are comprised solely of the choices that we make.
Although external factors have the ability to influence our actions, we are
ultimately responsible for the decisions that we make. He argues that life is a
“line segment.” We are all afraid of the end, because this is when we will
cease to exist, and we will have no hopes or worries for the future (which is
such a unique human ability). Although death is a well-known fact that lingers
in our minds, it is not felt until we experience
the “cliff of death”- the death of a loved one, or if we see someone die... this
is when we peer down the cliff of nothingness. This is the moment when we
realize that death is a fact of life, that we are just fragmented line segments
in a big sea of nothingness.
Even though we are fully aware that we can die tomorrow or
next week, we still do boring mundane things like study for tests and go grocery
shopping. What if you knew that you were going to die tomorrow? Wouldn’t you do things that you never had the
courage to do? What if you actually do die tomorrow? This is a thought that we tend to avoid. Would you be satisfied with your life as it is now, or would you
have regrets? Would it even matter? In the end, there is no acceptance of
death. No one enters the gates of nothingness with a smile on his face, saying
I’m ready to die, I’m ready to be an old story, a thick dusty book on an
abandoned shelf in a deserted library. People fight to stay alive, they kill
for life, they don’t want their futures to end abruptly.
Yes, we are all line segments in a sea full of experiences
and experiments. Some are longer than others, some jagged with traumatic
histories, others clean-shaven and polished with joy. Yet these line segments
intersect. They form a checkerboard. They leave imprints on one
another. Some leave gaps and burning holes (the blood seeping and dripping onto
future blank pages of nothingness) and others plant
daisy seeds. Experiences aren’t made by praying to the dusty air in an empty Vatican
church. Nor is the fetus of an experience made in a machine. An experience is
created amongst a parade of people. This is the way in which line segments connect and disconnect
from each other, people entering your life and exiting just as abruptly. We are
all silently aware of the frightening un-future that awaits us (like a beast
with big jaws behind the closet door, telling us each morning you’re getting
older, dear, older each day) but we mould this fact, make it more understandable
for our cowardly hearts, and glaze it over by having meaningful
relations with other line segments- by making the most of life.
I came across an interesting idea of how humans
desperately try to make sense of everything because of their phobia of
nothingness. The clock, we say that it goes “tick tock.” But close your eyes. Listen to it tick. It goes tick-tick-tick-tick- an indefinite tick tick that has no pattern or scheme,
is unpredictable, is frightening. Tick tock,
we say, because we want to pair things up, make the world romantic, we want to
make the mundane “tick ticking” an art. Because we want “tick” to have a soul
mate, we don’t want it to be lonely. These are our line segment lives, in the
sea of nothingness, the emotions dripping in rainbow hues from the tears of our
friends, making the water thick with red and yellow paint, as a page is added
to our dusty novel and the clock goes tick
tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick
tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick
(until the word tick stops making sense at all).
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