The Purpose of Existence
Way back when, at a time when I was much younger and the world seemed a little easier to navigate and figure out, in a world that was pre-Covid, pre-October 7th and pre-all hell breaking loose in the world, I had young children and a bit more responsibility in contextualizing the world for them and our individual and collective roles in it. I wrote this little essay after encountering a few tough questions and a few obnoxious suggestions from the emerging toxic positivity crowd. Back then, I was surrounded by some people whose answers to hard times, world crises, and shitty little problems like famine or clinical depression was simply to be more positive.
Just imagine everything working out for you! It makes life so much better.
Um…
Well, uh…
I wrestled with that stuff. In a way, they weren’t wrong. Sometimes bringing hope to a situation means suspending your disbelief in the idea that things can possibly change and imagine what that world post hope could look like. As a parent, I wrestled with the ways to guide my children to see hope in all things while also doing their part to make things better. But, they would often ask me, “what is my part?”
And I got their question. Yes, we know what to do in specific situations for the most part- help someone up if they fall, comfort a friend if they’re struggling, walk an old lady across the street if you see she needs a little help. But in a general sense? In that… “what is my role as a human in the world? What is my job?”
Below was my attempt to explain the answer to them and to myself. It aged well, I must admit. I’m happy with what I said then and I believe it still now. I hope you enjoy this little essay my attempt to distill the purpose of existence for my kids by way of a blog post.
The Purpose of Existence (AKA Go Big or Go Home)
By Marisa McFadden
Chronic positivity is rather overdone, let’s be honest.
No one needs to hear that to be happy you simply have to be happy. That’s just nuts. However, there is a lightness and a darkness to all things and living with the intention to see the light in dark situations and make that light grow seems like the absolute point of it all.
“Don’t say ‘hate.’” I say this to my kids as they lament the day’s school lunch or a math fact sheet loaded with long division.
“Maybe say, ‘I’m so blessed to have lunch’ or ‘thank God I’m not meeting under a bridge in a bombed out town in Syria somewhere trying to continue my schooling.’”
Yeah, the message doesn’t always get through.
There are things we loathe, things we disdain, things that make us wish we could be anywhere else, doing anything else. It’s hard to find the magic in a root canal, right? But, as you can see, I try to spin things into a positive light. Hell, I am lucky enough to have dental care.
Sometimes I think it’s a mental health exercise spun out of control when I approach life with “chronic positivity,” though. Cancer, war, famine- these are not things that come with a silver lining. Does it do us any good to “watch our words” and look for that grain-of-sand sized piece of positivity in something like the holocaust?
(This is getting deeper than you expected, huh?)
For my children, the margin of difference between hating school nachos and conflict in the Middle East is actually relatively slim. They’re pretty young and have the good fortune to be living in a first world country under a solidly middle class roof. To them, school nachos being soggy is negative and the fact that it’s the biggest complaint of their day means I have a responsibility to raise them to, at the VERY LEAST, help others have a day where the consistency of the nachos on their tray is the worst part.
What I try to impart on my children is that there are similar ways to approach both the conflicts in the Middle East and (are you tired of saying it in your brain?) soggy nachos. And so, I can positively approach the pile of canned cheese on stale tortilla chips and the ongoing violence in Iraq or Syria in the same way.
Ready for it?
I teach them that it is vitally important to look for the light in the darkness.
We are humans. We arrive in these bodies with consciousness, the capacity to feel love and hope, and a trove of aspirations and dreams. Somewhere in these places of darkness are people tending to each other’s love, pushing for the actualization of those dreams, reminding each other that hope is the fabric of humanity. In the dark places and dark times there are always slivers of light and our job— yours and mine— is to work to bring the light in and push the dark out.
And where there is light, even a speck, there is opportunity to grow it.
We can’t approach famine with an “attitude of gratitude,” but we can find the light in the darkness. In war and poverty, in the sweatshops of China and the Amazon Fulfillment Centers of America, in the soup kitchens and the school cafeterias where overworked and underpaid lunch ladies serve crappy food to overworked and underfed kids, there is darkness and there is light.
That lunch lady? Light comes to her when a kid likes being on her line because she’s a bright moment in their day.
“Look at her and smile,” I tell my kids. “Say, ‘pile on those nachos,’ and ‘I hope you have a great day.’”
“Watch the light grow and watch it light up her corner of the school.”
For you and I?
Lend a hand, forgive a jerk that cut you off, smile at a stranger, tell someone you’re praying for them and actually pray for them, forgive someone for their political beliefs and try to believe that they want this world to be a loving place, too.
Grow the light.
As humans, as mothers, fathers, children, lovers, friends, and strangers we must SHOW UP to grow the light. We must show up to shrink the darkness. Everyday. In every action. Through every breath.
We have to. It’s why we’re here. And, if I dare say so, it could very well be the purpose of existence.