Who Wanders and Reads
  • Home
  • Blog
  • The Itinerant
  • Further Reading
  • Donate

Who am I?

7/17/2016

0 Comments

 
Today I was talking with some friends. One of them brought up how Robin Williams committed suicide. How could a man on top of his craft, on top of the world, kill himself? This sparked a conversation on achievement. How do we stay motivated after we achieved the success we sought? We are impatient to reach our goals, but once we do, we miss the sense of progress and purpose we had when we were striving for it. This makes me suspicious of any philosophy of life or conception of identity that emphasizes possession, whether that be money, things, love, acceptance, accomplishments, prestige, or experiences.

According to existentialists, notably Sartre, we are what we do. Existence is action, and action is the fundamental activity of human existence. Our mass of accumulated experiences and memory does not define us. These are the deadened remnants of our past actions. As soon as we begin to identify with our past, we stagnate. Life force ceases to circulate within us. If we are not acting, we lose ourselves. It is the conundrum of human experience: life itself (action) destroys itself the instant it exists, instead becoming history. We must keep acting always. The way is the destination. 

​
Since the way is the destination, the ends never justify the means. The means must embody the ends.

The question, Who am I? can only be answered by the person asking it. The right and responsibility for doing so is given to no one else. The answer is the choices made and the actions undertaken. It must be answered anew each day, and living the answer to this question must be the fundamental pursuit and activity of any person's day-to-day life. Each month, each day, each hour is an opportunity to renounce, reinvent, or recommit. The greater the action, the greater the man.

Dillon Dakota Carroll
​Prague, Oklahoma
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    ...sees much and knows much
    DILLON DAKOTA CARROLL

    Adventures, Readings, and Musings

    Donate

    Archives

    January 2019
    December 2018
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014

    Categories

    All
    3D Printing
    Abroad
    Adventures
    Agile
    Agile University
    Ars Amorata
    Asia
    Awareness And Consciousness
    Bangladesh
    Books
    Challenges
    Community
    Coworking
    Design
    Emergence
    Etymology
    Events
    Existentialism
    Experience As Art
    Free Will
    French
    How To
    Identity
    Italiano
    Languages
    Learning
    Levaté
    Levaté
    Mechanics
    Microadventures
    Motorcycles
    Musings
    Narrative
    Pattern Languages
    Peru
    Philosophizings
    Photography
    Poetry
    Productivity
    Relationships
    Review
    Startup
    Tension And Trauma
    The Last Word
    Top 10
    Urban Exploration
    Water
    Writing

    RSS Feed

Either write things worth reading, or do things worth the writing.
Benjamin Franklin
  • Home
  • Blog
  • The Itinerant
  • Further Reading
  • Donate