Existentialism, Age 10

The radio broke in my car. This wouldnt be that big of a deal considering it was just a blown fuse, but considering all the autoshops were closed due to the holiday I was going to have to wait until Lia and I got back from our vacation in Wilmington to get it fixed. Basically it meant 9+ hours on the road with nothing to zone out to.

In order to pass the time, Lia pulled out one of my books of short stories and decided to read some of them aloud. She began to read a story that was written by a professor who taught at our school, David Gessner. It detailed an existential crisis he had when he was around 10, during which the thought of "nothingness" terrified him so much that he suffered from anxiety.

The story really spoke to me in more ways than one. While I didn't share some of the same views as the author, I too had an existential crisis at around the same age. I never spoke of it, I never had any extreme anxiety over it, but it certainly caused me to stay awake at night. I would lay in bed thinking about why there is so much detail in the world, why was it created as such. What was the point in making the colors a certain way, and does it even really matter. What was the point in creating air, if the absence of it only leads to death? These questions racked my brain as I laid in my Jurassic Park themed bed, staring at my ceiling.

To an adult, thoughts such as these may seem trivial, but to a child they can keep you up at night. Not being able to understand things, knowing that you don't understand them can be maddening, especially to a child with an imagination as vivid as mine was.

The story made me wonder how many other kids went through these sorts of thoughts. Pondering the universe. I wondered why when adults think these things are they deemed strange or even crazy. Such thoughts seem to me to only be human. Questioning the purpose of things has always been an important, if terrifying/controversial activity. However scary it may be to have these thoughts or questions, I always find it to be enlightening. It's through asking these questions that we begin to discover what we believe in. It certainly led me to my own personal faith.

I think that when you are a child your mind functions at its most freeing. You are not strapped down by the conventions of the world and other people. You are able to think and process things without the filter of a 24 hour news cycle, reality tv, and billboard advertisements.

Things just are, when you're a kid.