“Nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion” -Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

The end of life is not necessarily death.  I consider the end of life the point at which one is no longer in touch with his or her passions or no longer on the journey towards fulfilling such passions.  What defines a life, in my opinion, is how people discover passion and how they make use of that passion every day.  In the words of Ursula K. LeGuin, “It is good to have an end to journey toward; but, it is the journey that matters, in the end.”

With this in mind, I want to travel to Italy for more than a month.  Italy truly has a place within my soul, even though I have never been.  As new structures are built on old sites, our entire society bases itself upon the discoveries, philosophies, and ethics of the classical world.  The flowing, green fields covering Verona, the crumbling Flavian Amphitheatre, situated in contrast to the modern city of Rome, and the museums floating along the waters of Venice all remind both humanity and me of how the past dictates the future.  If our future is to be something worthwhile, we should envelop ourselves in the nuances of the present.  Italy, for me, holds the future in its ancient marble and frescoes.  That a place can be so cultured with the ancient world and yet still move forward every day, using lessons from the past in the present and future, simply leaves me astounded.  Italy embodies an ability to balance the past, present, and future all within one culture, something humanity has rarely been able to conquer.  I think everyone should have a chance in life to experience this balance.

      In finding balance, one must make mistakes along the way.  In fact, balance for some might be a tipped scale for others.  While we might never be sure of what our absolute passions are, experimentation allows us to eliminate modes of thought or actions which do not follow in our specific line of passion.  Realizing that something is wrong for oneself, and learning from such mistakes, helps push one closer to discovering one’s own passions.   I want to make mistakes.  I want to be wrong.  If I am always right, what is the point of living?  If I know everything, what drives me to climb a mountain and see a new sight, or to taste a new food?  I would rather be in error nine times out of ten and draw closer to my purpose than to have the answer all the time and stay in limbo with no place to move towards and no dream to journey forward to.  Humanity would not have discovered the vaccine to polio without eliminating other vaccines that did not work.  Edison even commented, "I didn’t fail 1,000 times. The light bulb was an invention with 1,000 steps.”  No journey reaches an end if we know the end at the time of commencement.

      Through mistakes, we eliminate our dislikes and come to find the things in life we love.  Falling in love does not necessarily mean with another person.  One can fall in love with a language, a piece of art, an ocean, or even a novel.  I want to fall in love.  From what I have gathered so far, in my short seventeen years, when in love one acts instinctively, putting passion above all else.  I want to understand that feeling of instinct, setting aside all outside influences.  To know one’s true self is nearly impossible when surrounded by societal pressures.  Love seems to be the only way to eliminate such pressures.  To truly understand human nature, we must attempt to see how we act in an environment that creates a blank slate for us.  Humanity cannot understand its own origins in the public, open world.  Love seems to be the only way to obtain such a blank slate to discover such origins, in many ways allowing the processes of nature or nurture to run their respective courses. 

      While instinct defines how humans act without societal pressures, one way to project this instinct is in one’s own home.  A home defines who one is.  If we restrict a home to a house, the type of house one lives in, no matter if he is rich or poor, defines his passions.  Even if one lives in a cardboard box, he can make it his own by cutting shapes into it.  I want to own my own home and let it define me.  Within a home, one can be free from societal pressures.  A home is a place for free expression.  It is the one place in which conformity is only required if it is to one’s own ideas.  The ability to express one’s thoughts and passions freely is not allowed in many aspects of today’s society.  Finding a niche for expression along one’s journey through life allows one to test passion.  That is what redecorating your home is all about: testing passions, searching for the right fit and taking down wall colors that no longer define who you are or who you have become.

      All these things I want to do in life lead me down my journey to finding my passions, embracing every step of the way.  However, once I do find my passion, I want it to be my occupation.  I have noticed that in today’s society the color that paints one’s life is usually a gray hue.  We see people going to work every day in gray suits, sitting at a cardboard-box of a desk against whitewashed walls.  Their eyes do not light up when their computer turns on or throughout their daily commute of two hours on the packed train.  I do not want to complain of “going to work early” every morning.  I want to want to wake up at 6:30 A.M. to design a space for a work of art, write a song, or dig up the bone of a Neanderthal.  Unless our occupations fit into that niche of expression, unless our occupations express our hopes and dreams, as employees we will be nothing but a waste of space.  The reason humanity embodies such varying cultures and human beings is because nobody fits the same niche.  Nobody has the same exact passions.  I believe we will find the true meaning behind life when humanity as a whole follows their passions to the bitter end instead of refusing to learn from mistakes.  Humans must learn to paint their houses orange, even when the rest of the neighborhood is gray.  If not, we will forever remain in a sea of fog, never experiencing the brilliance of a rainbow.

Footprints in sand eventually wash away.

Humans can only determine truth by reducing the untruths of the universe.  This is the epitome of the scientific method.  Researchers, whether in a lab or through fieldwork, devise hypotheses to test theories.  When enough hypotheses prove constant, a theory develops.  This appears paradoxical to the idea of reducing untruths: hypotheses prove the truth, and a theory embodies the general principal of this truth.  However, by definition, a theory is a concept that scientists generally accept because no study has yet to prove it false.  New hypotheses, whether for or against the theory, are the attempts to prove it false, for nothing can prove a theory true in all circumstances: undiscovered exceptions always exist.  In this, truth lies in the search for fallacy and opposition to this truth.

The idea that “there is no permanence” manifests itself in human culture through the effort of humans to create permanence (106).  Humans, as everyday researchers, constantly test the theory of impermanence by attempting to falsify it through opposite observations, hypotheses, and conclusions.  That “no man’s name is written” in the forest of the cedars urges Gilgamesh to test the theory that the forest and its guardian are impenetrable (70).  By human nature, Gilgamesh composes a hypothesis claiming a well-known, commonly accepted theory as erroneous, in a greater effort to make his name permanently known.  That Gilgamesh feels the need to “establish [his] name on bricks” as a man who conquered the unknown shows, through his overconfidence, man’s need to comfort the fear of obscurity with the notion of permanence (70).  However, though Gilgamesh succeeds in the short-term in killing Humbaba, he dies in the end of the epic, ultimately enhancing the truth in the theory of impermanence in the long term through his efforts to falsify it.  Gilgamesh works so meticulously towards keeping his fame permanent, that he forgets that “the kingship, not everlasting life….was [his] destiny” (118).  He lives his life through the hope that people remember it and that it will create meaning within the lives of others.  However, since Gilgamesh created little to no meaning in his life during it, humans in the future have no basis to work with, and he should theoretically disappear from history.  In this, his failed search for permanence further reduced the opposition to impermanence.

As well, the art of the ancient Egyptians exemplifies the urge to create permanence against the will of nature.  Egyptian sculptures, such as those of Rameses II at Abu Simbel, were huge statues, essentially carved out of a mountain of sandstone, creating a sense of timeless fame and life of the dominating Pharaoh.  In addition, the tombs of the Egyptians and the idea of mummification enhanced the idea of the Egyptian afterlife, seen as more important than the current life.  In Rameses’ huge building project and the effort and time put into predicting and preparing for the afterlife, the hope for permanence causes humans to forget that “when the gods created man they allotted to him death, but life they retained in their own keeping” (102).   The Egyptians, whether they had an afterlife or not is forever unknown to us; that they spent the majority of their time on Pyramids and prayers to Osiris, the god of the Underworld, we understand.  In the attempt to prove impermanence as false, the security of the present life was lost.  In the effort to create timelessness, the time to live and create meaning in one’s own life, during one’s own life, slowly evaporated.

With this in mind, I suppose we gain meaning in life through the varying ways that we attempt to prove the theory of impermanence as false.  Some, like Gilgamesh, work only towards having “[his] name establish[ed] on bricks” (70).  To a selfish man like Gilgamesh, building his own name for future generations to know gave him meaning in life.  However, to others, many of whom we do not label as heroes, they attempt to prove impermanence false in leaving a lasting impression in others, rather than in history.  A small gesture of holding the door for another, adopting a child, or even helping a fellow classmate pick up his or her books when they fall in the hallway is how we test impermanence.  If one act can affect another human being, we have, through these lasting impressions left with others, created the highest degree of impermanence possible.  While these attempts to engrave our marks in time are clearly subtler than those of Gilgamesh, these create more meaning in the present.  If we do not have the resources, or perhaps even the heroic qualities, to test impermanence, we do so through our simple actions and the impressions others carry on with them of us after our interactions.  Yet, no matter how many people we affect or how many monuments go up in our honor, the truth remains that monuments eventually wither and crumble, and humans die.   

The majority of the human race, both in the past and present, have yet to live in the now, and always prepare for some goal in the future.  Yet, we create order and the sense of eternity through our goals for the future.  Every human has some type of goal, whether it is to get into college, to secure a job, or even to wake up in the morning.  Humans, by nature, create meaning in life off of their individual goals.  Life, after all, is a series of completed and failed goals.  The idea of proving impermanence false has manifested itself so deeply within the human mind, and is such a paramount aspect of human nature, that humans feed off of their goals for the future, rather than “going with the flow” and not thinking ahead.  We realistically cannot live solely in the present, “feast and rejoice, dance and be merry” without instinctively planning our next dance move or food to consume (102).  Thus, we embrace this constant working towards the future.  Every act in the present leads to another in the future, and every future act, once completed, becomes a part of the past.  The constant struggle between fleeting moments and lasting impressions makes up what we define as a human life.  We keep moving forward to secure these future moments, and as they disappear into the past, we enter into a vicious cycle of hope for a lasting moment.  Yet, the concept of a lasting moment is utterly impossible.  This cycle, ironically, moves humans forward through life, and is what keeps humans stable.  In the words of Charles Kettering, “My interest is in the future, because I am going to spend the rest of my life there.”