utility of being

1 August 2022

This is me no longer questioning the utility of my being.

I watched a brief video of an old Jordan Peterson lecture this morning. It was maybe just a one-minute clip, but its message stopped me cold, turned me to stone. He said that depression and anxiety are the result of questioning the utility of one’s being. Only infrequently is a person’s mind hardwired at birth for chemical imbalance; anxiety and depression are more often linked to existential misapprehensions.

Yea. I’d say that was 100% accurate for me. I’ve found my home and my calm – that is to say, I’ve relief of my existential concerns – in the philosophies of Buddhism and Taoism. To be clear, these are not religious faiths. They do not technically conflict with the Christian faith in which I was raised; in fact, when you zoom out to understand that language is a symbolic human construct, it becomes far easier to see the universality of all faiths.

But back to my point: I’ve discovered the utility of my being. It lies in the symbolic human construct that is language and it is to help others look deeper. Look deeper at themselves, look deeper at their beliefs, look deeper at their relationships, look deeper at their communities, look deeper into their world, into the universe. Don’t take anything whatsoever at face value. Pay attention, then question. You’ll find this is the best way to love anything, really, including yourself.