“The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for a newer and richer experience.”

-Eleanor Roosevelt

👋 Hey Friends,

Welcome to today's episode of Fridays Findings where we distil and discuss some of the personal findings that I have made over the past seven days since I published the last episode about acknowledging the people we love. Today I'd like to try and answer the one question that nobody can answer. 👉

The one question: What is the reason behind life?

🤷‍♀️ The struggle

I, like a lot of others, often ask myself why I should bother about the things we do. We all know the feeling of waking up in the morning, and not seeing the point of even getting out of bed, going to work, listening to yet another lecture at university or going to school.

In that sense I often find myself doubting what I am truly feeling. I overthink the situation and don't see a point or the importance of getting up or going on with my life. This feeling of being an outside viewer of my life, who doesn't understand the trajectory that it is going, strikes me when I don't achieve my goals.

❌ Wrong goal mindset

In my academic life, I strive for a near-flawless final score which I have set myself because I knew it was something possible to achieve. Still, this goal gives me challenges.

Achieving a particular score on an exam has never brought me immediate happiness. Of course, I have been proud of myself but it never really developed into actual happiness. I have never felt excited, or adrenalin rushing through my veins after getting an A. The emotions I felt were rather counterintuitive, as I was worried that I couldn't do it again or I was frightened that an A- wouldn't be enough.

As I realised this a couple of months back it was hard to find a reason to study or get projects ready on time. It felt like this rain of self-doubt covered me with so many negative feelings and emotions that I couldn't even start working on the projects.

Being pulled back from what I wanted to initially do, resulted in sleepless nights with open eyes staring at the ceiling, feeling worried that this project wouldn't achieve what I wanted it to do.

✅ The new approach

Recently, I've become more aware of the fact that nobody, neither you, I or anybody else has figured out how to live. There is no such thing as a formula to live by and there is no way to find an actual reason for our existence because the question of a reason brings up the concept of reason itself.

Why does there have to be a reason after all? What does a reason for living mean? I feel that we cannot find such a thing as an actual explanation for why we live, feel, and get hurt (physically and emotionally) or why we strive. I feel that only through trying out new things, bringing ourselves out of our comfort zones and engaging in new ways of living we can explore different approaches to what it means to live.

But it is still sure to me that we cannot find the one right answer to this question of infinite possibilities. So, we learn from that, that there is no reason not to question your life but there surely is also no reason to do so. In this manner, we are the ones who decide whether we would like to overthink our life and live in doubt and regret or if we want to stand up, try out new ideas and experience different parts of what living can mean.

That way may also experience pain, sorrow and guilt but we sure also do experience joy, satisfaction, peace, delight, serenity, hope, affection, amusement, pride, gratitude, happiness, ecstasy, optimism, wonder, enthusiasm, curiosity.

What is there more to want from a life that has been given to us by chance than experience it?

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Thanks again and I'll see you soon.

Victor (@observethecosmos)