Absurdity Zone

Group 3 started there out hour of teaching with their skit. The skit started out as three students listened to a “teacher” give them a ridiculous amount of work to finish within an unrealistic amount of time. One students said, “I quit”, and dropped out of school. Another student stayed because he felt like he had no choice but to tough it out. The last student was eager to finish the class as it signified they were closer to accomplishing their goal of getting a degree and eventually, a good job. This skit in my opinion was the best so far to represent what the reading was about. The skit was easy to follow and relatable to our current situations.

The main point of the skit was to represent the three choices we have while chasing the meaning of life. The first way of looking at things is the “suicide path”. The suicide path meaning that they have come to the conclusion that there is no meaning of life and no reason to live. The second path is acceptance of absurdity where the they accept the meaning of life is absurd and live with it. The third and final path is the leap of faith where you hope to find meaning of life in the next life. Group 3 thought it best if the class broke into groups and had a debate arguing each side. The debate went terrible, but the discussion went well. Each group presented a good opinion but no real debate happened.

One female student who had the class from last semester brought up the point of big M vs small M. Big M stands for the cosmological meaning of life and the small M stands for each of us finding our own meaning of life. The discussion never fully matured toward that direction though. Thinking about the meaning of life that way makes sense to me. While everyone wants to know the big M, the meaning behind why we are here. The small M is just as important in my opinion. A person needs to find meaning in their own lives regardless. If we were to apply the three paths of life to the small M, we can see how people can go through their lives. The suicide path would be where a person searched for their own meaning of life and never found something that they were passionate about so they gave up. The accepting absurdity path would be those that never  gave up searching for their meaning or they accepted their own meaning of life. Finally the leap of faith would be somebody that believes in an afterlife where they give meaning of life not to this one but the next one.

While I’m not sure if we will ever find the big M, the cosmological meaning of life, I am happy to find my own small M. I’m not too sure what it is but I’ll continue to search for it. Besides what if we found out the big M, and I didn’t like the answer.