The Effervescence of Time

So I'm pretty sure all of have had some sort of similar experience: you wake up in the middle of night and realize that you are going to die; you become aware that you are, in fact, subject to an inescapable fate that only becomes more and more relevant with the immutable tick of the clock. The whole idea of losing all sense of awareness and conscious thought can be a little overwhelming to some. Personally, being a strong proponent of individuality and free will, I find it more frightening that our lives are essentially chained by the reigns of fate-- we have an abject lack of choice when it comes to death. Some people find solace in religion like Christianity and Islam, which are afterlife-centric; others try to live life the best they can without wondering what happens afterward.

Although I was brought up as a Catholic, I've recently become disillusioned with the validity of many of its fundamental tenets, exacerbated by the ubiquity of hypocrisy within Christianity I've been exposed to through in both my expositions in history and personal experience. Consequently, like most people, I'm very unsure what to think about this whole death issue. While my emotion yearns for a "happy ending" to life like the Christian heaven, my rational thought urges me to think otherwise. Maybe our anthropocentric thoughts are simply the result of our natural tendencies to overvalue our existences and that we are simply like any other biological creature-- we are born, we live, we breed, we die. But I don't endorse this depressing mode of thought. Rather, I believe that our consciousness is too visceral and real and that what Chomsky calls the "creative impulse" of man suggests something deeper about our lives than just spontaneous, absurd existences. But of course, I don't actually know anything and no one ever will. Maybe we can find meaning in our lives through our impact on other people-- but I am reminded of the words of Sartre in his iconic play, No Exit: "Hell is other people." I have to agree with Sartre here; each individual's concept of his/her meaning is influenced by the culmination of external beliefs and opinions imparted to him/her, that is, we are all trapped in a sort of existential mire, marked by our inability to determine our own so called identity.So trying to influence others will not actually achieve anything, seeing as it will only cause us to drift away from who we actually are. So maybe instead we could, as the famous Abraham Maslow proposed, find self actualization, a sort of existential epiphany, later in life. But I don't think the chances of that are likely. Time sure does pass by so quickly...