I think this time around I’d like to start by saying that I am not a very smart man. At the time of writing this, I ran a marathon yesterday, and every step sends a wave of pain somehow all the way up to my shoulders. Running the marathon in itself was not unwise, but the total lack of preparation leading up to it sure was. I bought my running shoes five days before, did not break them in by running, and the last time I ran before the marathon was before Spring Break (one out of only five runs I went on since signing up). This experience tempted me to write about how joints work or the kinematics of human motion. After some thought, I realized it’s not the motion but the emotion that’s far more important in these situations. What exactly drove me to finish this race, especially when I signed up for it on a whim? Nobody would have faulted me for quitting, I would have been quite happy to stop on that damned hill around mile 22.
More broadly, what is it that keeps me going in general? From an evolutionary perspective, the early humans who put off hunting for a day, probably did not make it. The ones who walked that extra mile, even with their feet about to fall off, probably found water, shelter, and food. When you believe you’re close to an end goal, regardless of whether you actually are, the brain fires off dopamine like nobody’s business. All of that makes enough sense. When one has things to strive toward, ideals to pursue, it almost goes without saying that you cannot stop. Dare I reference the favorite writer of every male pseudointellectual in their twenties? “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.” – Nietzsche
What about when you can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel? What if you cannot even find the tunnel, much less a path? I was having a good old mutual trauma dump with a friend recently when they made a bold statement. They suggested that the only, or at least the most important, philosophical question is whether to take one’s own life. Your “why” could be a person, a thing, an animal, an idea, anything really. I, alongside many others, I am sure, have had and lost a couple of “why”s throughout my life. There have been times when I have not had a single “why.” How is one to bear, to persevere without a why?
The search for meaning, the “why”s of life, I saw as something external for a long time. Just as important as the “why”s, perhaps moreso, are the “why not”s. Separate from external validation and approval, coming from oneself for oneself, the “why not” is how one can go on without seemingly any reason to. Why not run a marathon? Why not get out of bed today? Why not dare to live another day even when to take each breath is to drown? It is not selfish to insist upon oneself to do those things based on nothing but whimsy. The determination to go on is the determinant of being human just as much as it is to question it.
