Last Thursday, I saw a video of a girl crushing crimson cherries, soft pink strawberries, and sour-seeming blueberries, brushing pulp and nectar on her skin in place of lipstick, blush, and eyeshadow.
Honestly, it was beautiful. I mean, the girl was gorgeous to begin with, but something about the rawness of the colors brought an ethereal perfection to her face. Even so, my amazement did not last for long; mere moments after, I was thinking about how those cherries were alive once. They grew on trees and brought color to the world around them and loved the bees and had cherry friends – okay, probably not that last one – but now they were reduced to nothing more than a method of glorification for this ordinary, albeit lovely, human face.
And I do love cherries, but that isn’t the point. I guess the point is that the fruit forced me to contemplate life as a whole; how can such a fruitful existence become nothing more than pulp once it is over?
It’s something I turn over again and again in my head; what is purpose? No – what is my purpose? As a mortal, I am but a blip on the timeline of the grand scheme of the universe. I live now, and then I will not matter. I will do nothing great. I have no desire to. I think about other people that have spent time at my university; I will not be a movie star like Chris Pine, nor will I build bombs like Oppenheimer, nor will I create a multi-billion dollar tech company like Steve Wozniak. I will not be remembered, as they will. In 200 years I will be nothing more than a headstone. If even that – I’ve just been told that when countries run out of cemetery space they remove your tomb. This is to make room for the people who actually achieved something, the ones who matter. I imagine at this point, if my bones are even still there, they will be tossed aside and crushed under some rocks and dirt, never to be seen or thought of again.
This, combined with the caliber of the people I spend time with, really makes me ask: What’s the point? I’m telling you, everyone around me is so sure! They know what they want and how to get there and they submit their job applications or write novels or network or research how AI models can be used to find genetic discrepancies in RNA-coding. They sit beside their future wives at coffee shops and then they go to class and pay attention and do their homework and it repeats, and then they work their summer internship so that one day they will change the world.
I am not that dedicated to anything. Actually, I’d say I’m rather aimless. I have goals, sure, but mainly I’d just like to be happy.
I want my well-paying job – but please, how is a damn product management internship going to fulfill me? And I can’t even do something different; I’ve already accepted that it is the least bad option of all the things I could probably do with my major.
I want to be in love – but trust me, I’ve gone on enough first dates to know my future wife is not on Hinge (ironic, because my parents met online, and here they are going strong 20 years later).
So then what am I living for? And what is the point if I have no legacy?
Well, I think, all of these people, with their different discovered meanings or something-or-others, aren’t they – aren’t we – all tied together by this same goal? We all just want to be happy, and that is a goal in and of itself. And every single person is on a path to do things that they think will make them so, and for some people that is being a CEO of a company or discovering an element or proposing a grand budget plan to put our country out of debt or being immortalized in film for all of eternity.
This doesn’t change the fact that I look at these paths and know they’d never make me happy.
So I started exploring what does.
Here is what I found:
Sitting on grass fields in the sun (bonus points if it’s with a fruit tea)
Watching the leaves change colors
Sunrises (and being awake while the rest of the world slumbers)
A hot, home-cooked meal
Candle lighting
Poetry (especially Walt Whitman’s)
Sentimental synth-pop (like Duran Duran or Depeche Mode)
And perhaps most importantly:
Spending time with the people I love
And I reflect on this list, and suddenly, it seems all so incredibly simple. Being alive, and experiencing the world, and finding love in every fallen branch and cracked stone – that is what brings me joy. Why am I scared about finding some divine purpose? Why does it matter at all? I know what will make me happy while I am consciously present on this planet; the rest, surely, will work out.
This love? This is what we were made for. Love is, undoubtedly and infinitely, the best thing that we as humans are capable of. It is everywhere; it is in our friends and the sun and art and food and the leaves and the world. And if you put that love out there – if you allow yourself to feel it in all you do – you will be fulfilled. I do not need people speaking my name in an eon for that. I have it now.
In this way, the fate of the cherry seems not quite so sad. While I live, I hope to act as it did. I hope to fill people’s lives with color through my love. I hope to bring them joy and help them appreciate the beauty present in the world, just as I do. And like the cherry, I will be crushed one day, and my body will break down into the Earth it was born from, just as Whitman suggests. But this is no sorrow; my nutrients will fertilize new cherry trees and allow for new beauty to be created.
In this way, every idea I have ever had and all of my love for the world will never be gone forever; they will continue to exist in each life I have touched, and in every mark I have left on this planet. In this way, I am infinite.
Leave a Reply