Meaning

Admit it. We are not getting any younger.

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The search for meaning occurs in every sane, and perhaps insane, person. It gives significance to what individuals do, especially those that they have already been doing for some time. As Weber suggests in his Verstehen, meaning takes time. Understanding the complexities of how meaning occurs is one of the cornerstones of comprehending what it is to be human in its most basic, yet most significant context: the world.

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I have always found it imperative that sociology majors--and every individual who eschews stagnation for that matter--read and practice Mill's Sociological Imagination. It enables the identification of one's own problems into communal, social and global context; that they are not only personal, but is somehow shared by many in other parts of the world. The immediate goal here is a realization of a broader perspective in life. My Art Appreciation professor once told us that those who don't travel usually are narrow-minded, their world only that of their own minute sphere where everything is wishfully revolving around them, ONLY them. I have always been an outgoing person. My mother always laments that I am so "layas", even in college, even though she knows very well that community exposure-immersions are an essential element of my beloved major. These trips made me appreciate the readiness and smallness of similar things, that what binds uniformly all phenomenon is diversity itself. Hence, the inability, or rather the refusal, to appreciate diversity results in a painfully narrow horizon slimmer than that of a liver cancer patient's chance to survive.

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The human genome is practically 99.9% similar, and that .1% results in the diversity of races all over the world. With that in mind, it is pretty safe to assume that the diverse problems of all humanity fall into just a few fundamental things. And so, losers, on a literal level, are they who spend a lot theirs and other people's time brooding on trivial matters, say, fashion trends, cellular phones and facebook connections.

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Admit it. We are not getting any younger.

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I totally agree with Rizal when he chastised his colleagues who were just gambling in Madrid way back 1800s. He said that youth is too precious to be wasted, to be spent on trivial and impractical matters. Boredom, when one is in his/her age of flowering youth, is obscene. It is sickening to know that many youth of today (people below, say 40) spend their time lolling about in the mall, farting around playing online games, pursuing jobs and not careers. What's more appalling is that most of the youth are already and willingly part of the system, of the lack of consciousness, of institutionalized oppression, of this culture of "utuan." This is a result of people not finding meaning in what they do, not knowing what they ought to do, of stagnation that is spreading through osmosis. What's depressing is that these people do not even resist the status quo and are willingly taking part on the perpetration of such abomination.

In a developing country like ours, we cannot afford feckless pluralism in such a scandalous scale, of not having a clear-cut goal of what to achieve as a community. Scattered activities are their appearances: like trash in the streets. There is almost no difference in having a false, conceited dream and not having any at all. Again, a paradox: that the realization of meaning or function is that you cannot attain one without the other. Doing something is not really meaningful if it has no real and beneficial purpose; having a purpose is not enough if it is not meaningful. Empty are the souls who go to work everyday and eventually hate everything and everyone in it because they get no real satisfaction from what they are doing. Its your work, your labor, and it's a very significant portion of human dignity. So if your work is meaningless, what does it say about your life? Do the math.

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Its your life. When was the last time you did something meaningful for the first time? If its not now, when would you start to find meaning? Death is a possibility that is not only probable, but is sure to come. Anytime. Amidst the gamut of possibilities, we must find meaning, the would-be summary of our lives. Are the things that we do--in our youthful prime--serve a meaningful purpose? Do we really want the things we are doing? If yes, what kind of person are we then?

Life is short. Live it.

Admit it. We are not getting any younger.