Second Class

In my second class of existentialism, we talked a lot about what we considered to be a crushing event for us in our lives and what the consequences or repercussions of that event are in our lives. It essentially moved towards how do we deal with a crushing event and how do we heal or come back from something like that if we even can. My response to myself was that a crushing event is something that breaks down everything you were living for or that pulls the rug out from under you. A crushing event truly makes you feel lost and without purpose in the world. Without something guiding you in life you become like a husk of your former self and it can be utterly debilitating for people when they were living their life for one particular thing and then all of a sudden it is completely gone. The discussion led us to the idea that a traumatic event can essentially shape one's character. A crushing event like this could either break a person for the rest of their life and never let them move on from thinking of what they have lost or they can integrate that into who they are and move on with life - finding a new purpose or passion that will keep them moving forward. Our professor was surprised that so many of us were trying to put a positive spin on things - saying something along the lines of how crushing events usually truly ruin people for a long time and the fact that we were saying you should move towards healing and healthy coping mechanisms was strange or rather interesting. However, the way I think of this is how I usually apply logic to most choices in my life. The way I think about these sorts of things is what would be the alternative? If I were to suffer a crushing event what would be the alternative to working towards living healthily and unbroken again? Well, the alternative would be to simply be a ruined human for the rest of my existence; the preferrable option is obvious to me. There were some people in the class who were essentially saying that a crushing event is too hard to move on from and my response to that is that finding a way to move on is a much more preferable approach simply because I don't want to feel like garbage for the rest of my life because of something I likely can't change. After the class, I went to spend time with my groupmates to get to know them better and I'm really glad we did as now I feel a lot more comfortable reaching out to them for scheduling a time to meet and work on our projects as well as just having a better grasp on who the people in my group are. I am excited to see how the first class led by the students is going to go and I'll be sure to keep an eye out for good ways of keeping the class engaged in discussion as our group goes the week after next.

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