The Questions I Can’t Answer

When each and every moment and interaction is a lesson, what is the end goal? What is the purpose? The questions are spiritual, religious, or whatever you might label it. But to put it simply, if there were no reason for our existence, then nothing matters — we are blobs of flesh that were never conscious, so we will never be impacted by the going-ons of our lives: we die, the end. But, that is not the case. I can say that, at least, because I am me. Are you you? I should hope so, because I can only speak for myself. The big question here is this: why am I me and not anyone else? In that question is the proof of something more to life, some type of greater meaning or purpose. If I am me, then I am me for a reason because I could so easily have been anybody else.

One day, I will die. What happens then? It doesn’t matter. What matters is that I am me, a human, alive, right now. The inspiration for my thoughts now is that I spent six hours talking to an older man I first met at work. We met today at 11am. We parted at 5pm. The time flew by. He has been helping me with my Icelandic, and we often talk about other things like life, linguistics, and the world. The importance of linguistics here is that language is how we express and identify the things around us and their meanings. “That was sick!” as opposed to “That was magnificent!” I choose those words for no particular reason other than to illustrate the idea of expression. “I am feeling ___” …feeling what? Finnish has a word, sisu, to be sisukas. Icelandic has a word, fjallmyndarlegur. Good luck using Google Translate. Like how leiðinlegt and skemmtilegt are used to express a more general sentiment rather than their literal translations of “boring” and “fun.”

In Finnish, you have a thirst. You have a hunger. Like how you have a cat or a car. You also have cold — you don’t necessarily be cold. Learning languages and linguistics in general is excellent to connect abstract ideas with written words. When it comes to English, simply read a book from the 1800s and compare the way things are expressed to the modern day: there is no comparison. The very nature of expressiveness is lost. Then there are behemoths of issues such as Icelanders saying the likes of “Ég ætla að check it out,” as one man said when visiting my workplace. My point here is that when one concept from another language captures this idea you want to express, you suddenly have the tools to express that same idea in another language. But first you must know what exists; that takes a lot of work.

Going back to the topic of meaning and purpose, how do we draw meaning from events? In a way, the things that happen to us are a language of their own. Learning to interpret them is impossible. There is meaning, but the exact meaning is known only to something beyond ourselves and can therefore never be understood entirely. However, we can grow accustomed to these events and their consequences. For example, I met someone new who I find very interesting on the exact same day that someone who was very interesting decided to leave my life. They are remarkably similar people. There isn’t much to say about that, rather it’s simply a fascinating coincidence. Like how I ran into a friend on the streets last Saturday after running into my friends unexpectedly at the library which I only went to because the event I was supposed to go to with my landlord got cancelled the day before, resulting in a miscommunication that prevented me from going with my landlord that Saturday to another event… which was meaningful because I hadn’t seen that friend in six months… and we had planned to meet the very next day… and she was only on that street because the gallery she had planned to visit that day was unexpectedly closed. Quite the series of events.

Is there meaning to that? I would say yes, such as how my life went through a harsh and rapid transition in a matter of days. I made new friends, started doing new things, attending new events. Everything happened all at once. I even began meeting with this man the exact same day those previously mentioned people went and came. It’s curious.

Then, there’s this idea of talking for six hours. It made me think of how I want to spend my time. I simply asked myself, “What else would I rather do?” The answer is not much else. I could walk: I did. I could go to the store: I’ll go tomorrow. Thus, I will talk. We talked about things like how the youth are losing creativity and expressiveness in both the degradation of language and the availability of “convenience.” We agreed that the easier life is made for us by society, the worse the quality of that life becomes. He described using a sheep’s jaw bone wrapped in grass as a toy horse. As opposed to today being able to buy a toy off the shelf. Or the connection to the world in the form of putting wood in a stove as opposed to turning up a thermostat. And, of course, meeting people in real life and talking like humans as opposed to online parasocial relationships.

The questions are thus: What are we meant to do? and What does anything mean? As for what we are meant to do, I think that is to live. And living means being around people, doing things together that we find enjoyable. What things mean is more so up for interpretation. According to my own personal experiences, I think of events as a funnel: they narrow and focus the paths I can take. Losing that friend I found to be so interesting from my life was quite a painful experience. Then I was immediately shown: “Look, there are other people just like that, even better people.” And I found some peace in that. Though I’m always left asking, “Why didn’t things just go better in the first place?” but there’s no point in that. I got rejected from 30 jobs, only one company ever answered me — where I work now. And it’s the best place I could have ever asked to work at. Surely there is some bigger picture here.

I’m simply writing down my thoughts for the day, there is no structure or organization to this post. I’m watching life unfold before my eyes, wondering what will happen next and attempting to make sense of things along the way. I have many questions I can’t answer. I don’t know if there’s any point in trying to answer them. I’m meeting people, doing things, experiencing life. This is life. So here I am: me. Learning about life for the first time ever at 25 years old. What I found so fascinating talking to this man today is that he’s a foreigner having lived in Iceland for over 20 years. His perspectives on the country and language are an outsider’s: he sees all the little and interesting details for that reason. When it comes to myself, I feel the same: a foreigner to life itself. Integrating is a mountainous task, but I have the benefit of being able to pick up on all the little and interesting details that so often are missed.