Lindsay wrote this about herself 3 years ago. She wrote it as part of an 11 page paper for an English class. The assignment was to write about themselves and what they had learned. My sister came across the paper and just sent it to me. she is planning to use some of it at Lindsay's memorial in Oct. I just want to share a small piece if you so care to read it. I think it gives you a little insight into Linday. The kind of person she was. Emotionally, intellectually etc. Linday wrote these words at 17 years of age, 3 years into her 6 year battle with cancer. She continues to blow me away. So, if you care to read on...here goes:
A view of My Horizon:
At the end of The Stranger, Mersault conludes his life with poignant and painful words: "I had lived my life one way and I could just as well have lived it another. I had done this and I hadn't done that. I hadn't done this thing but I had done another. And so?...Nothing, nothing mattered, and I knew why... Throughout this whole absurd life I'd lived, a dark wind had been rising toward me from somewhere deep in my future, across years that were still to come, and as it passed, this wind leveled whatever was offered to me at the time, in years no more real than the ones I was living."
And he's right. He could have done a lot of things with his life and experienced many different outcomes. But to say that it wouldn't have mattered is again assuming that life needs to be justified. It "matters" simply because it was a moment lived. His unreal years were lost one unlived moment at a time. And it is the open possibilities of moments that makes them significant. That should be enough.
So the decisive point I have reached in my thoughts and growth this year is that I am an idealist living in an imperfect world. Despite existentialism shaking up my beliefs, I do not consider it to be an end truth, but rather, a necessary transition to a greater truth. Nothingness cannot be the end. Thus, while I have made my definition of an idealist on my own terms, it is the best word I see to define myself, at least as who I have become this half of the year. An idealist is not an optimist; an idealist lives the way she wants things to be, without the optimist's blindness to their actual state. An idealist lives based on things that are inherently right with no reward for verification nor pressure to continue.
I am confident now that my role as an idealist is not an easy or often respected one, in our modern life. I've learned that there are a lot of people in the world that cannot even understand idealism. In all honesty, I don't think I do either. I can't explain why I live this way. It defies Darwin. It scold Freud. And it slaps marx across the face. But the basic requirement of an idealists creed is a belief in people, in humanism. And even with all the frustration at human flaws that we have read of this year and is strikingly evident in literary modernism, I, the idylic humanist, glean more out of such critical analysis than cynicism. Because for humanity, because I want to, I believe that there is hope.
A view of My Horizon:
At the end of The Stranger, Mersault conludes his life with poignant and painful words: "I had lived my life one way and I could just as well have lived it another. I had done this and I hadn't done that. I hadn't done this thing but I had done another. And so?...Nothing, nothing mattered, and I knew why... Throughout this whole absurd life I'd lived, a dark wind had been rising toward me from somewhere deep in my future, across years that were still to come, and as it passed, this wind leveled whatever was offered to me at the time, in years no more real than the ones I was living."
And he's right. He could have done a lot of things with his life and experienced many different outcomes. But to say that it wouldn't have mattered is again assuming that life needs to be justified. It "matters" simply because it was a moment lived. His unreal years were lost one unlived moment at a time. And it is the open possibilities of moments that makes them significant. That should be enough.
So the decisive point I have reached in my thoughts and growth this year is that I am an idealist living in an imperfect world. Despite existentialism shaking up my beliefs, I do not consider it to be an end truth, but rather, a necessary transition to a greater truth. Nothingness cannot be the end. Thus, while I have made my definition of an idealist on my own terms, it is the best word I see to define myself, at least as who I have become this half of the year. An idealist is not an optimist; an idealist lives the way she wants things to be, without the optimist's blindness to their actual state. An idealist lives based on things that are inherently right with no reward for verification nor pressure to continue.
I am confident now that my role as an idealist is not an easy or often respected one, in our modern life. I've learned that there are a lot of people in the world that cannot even understand idealism. In all honesty, I don't think I do either. I can't explain why I live this way. It defies Darwin. It scold Freud. And it slaps marx across the face. But the basic requirement of an idealists creed is a belief in people, in humanism. And even with all the frustration at human flaws that we have read of this year and is strikingly evident in literary modernism, I, the idylic humanist, glean more out of such critical analysis than cynicism. Because for humanity, because I want to, I believe that there is hope.
c: :heart:
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