Entry #6 Raison D'être

    

     What are the reason's in which we stay here. Simply, What are we meant for? Raison D'être is the reason that a person strives for in their existence. Does there need to be a reason? Some people live for the fact that they will one day be reunited with the ones that they love and live in peace eternity. But, what about the people who live to live. Those who want to live for something, be something meant to be, but have unrelenting obstacles and barriers that can never be broken down. Like the American Dream, that so little will achieve. What's it like for those who are idle, longing for a richer home, richer family, and a more meaningful life. Do they suffer? 
    In his letters to Theo, Vincent Van Gogh describes this predicament as if living through the eyes of a bird, In the springtime a bird in a cage knows very well that there’s something he’d be good for; he feels very clearly that there’s something to be done but he can’t do it; what it is he can’t clearly remember, and he has vague ideas and says to himself, ‘the others are building their nests and making their little ones and raising the brood’, and he bangs his head against the bars of his cage. And then the cage stays there and the bird is mad with suffering. ‘Look, there’s an idler’, says another passing bird — that fellow’s a sort of man of leisure. And yet the prisoner lives and doesn’t die; nothing of what’s going on within shows outside, he’s in good health, he’s rather cheerful in the sunshine. But then comes the season of migration. A bout of melancholy — but, say the children who look after him, he’s got everything that he needs in his cage, after all — but he looks at the sky outside, heavy with storm clouds, and within himself feels a rebellion against fate. I’m in a cage, I’m in a cage, and so I lack for nothing, you fools! Me, I have everything I need! Ah, for pity’s sake, freedom, to be a bird like other birds. 
   I see this a lot in the lives that we live today. I feel as though as the upper class looks down at everyone and believes that they are idle people. That if anyone tried hard enough that they can make it, and it almost feels as if I am nothing if I don't live up to these standards that the world has brought up upon us. We are told every day as a child to live up to our dreams, but once we go out and reach for those dreams, we are told that they are not realistic, that that is not the road that fate has chosen for me. I must, I must do this thing that has been sold to me. 
   Am I idle, am I meant for nothing if I am not a bird that can fly free. I have everything that I need, but that is the one thing that I will never be. I think that this stigma that we must live up to is an utter fake. The fact, that we must have our own Raison D'être is an illusion of what this world truly is. A world made up of nothingness. Now, this does not mean a world without happiness or joy, but its surely not the one that most have lived their whole life for. 
  Van Gogh depicts this feeling that we all must feel as being a prisoner to one self. That this feeling that we must be imprisoned what makes us who we are inside of ourselves. We all fight are own battles, that are surely never ending, and they may be blind to one another, but we can still find solace within each other. You know, what makes the prison disappear is every deep, serious attachment. To be friends, to be brothers, to love; that opens the prison through sovereign power, through a most powerful spell. But he who doesn’t have that remains in death. But where sympathy springs up again, life springs up again.
    These types of philosophies can be so meaningless to some, but I don't know anyone who hasn't asked the question of what is it that's meant to be? Why are we here? Why wasn't I born somewhere else, to somebody else? Why must I choose the road not taken? Why are our destination's unknown? We should just live to live. Keep going as the stars whilst ever glowing. I believe in stories like those in, "Jeff Who Lives at Home" where people can live as though as their meant for something while they are doing seemingly nothing.Then suddenly, one day their whole life would be shown to be only lived up to this moment, this special moment where they save a life of another. I feel as though as we will never know our "reason" to why we live until the moment that we lived our lives then presents itself. And for now, its an uncontrollable ride with twists and turns that are relentless and unpredictable, but beautiful and freeing as such.