There’s nothing like a week at the beginning of the Indiana winter to make one wish for the Indiana summer again. (Yes, I am aware of the fact that Winter doesn’t actually begin until December 21st, but it might as well be here already with 22°F temperatures and light snow). My university is relatively small, so all of the buildings on campus are within a five minute walk of each other. I’m walking from Knobview on one end of campus, to Life Sciences on the other end to hand deliver a take-home final exam for a professor who would not accept it by email. I am wearing my black jacket I got last year after I came back to the states and my hat, and cannot help but feel as if my hands are going to develop frost bite and fall off at any moment. I’m balancing holding papers and trying to put my hands in my pockets for warmth.
So, yeah, I’m not a huge fan of the winter. It’s a gray, depressing time of year when everything dies and we suffer through endless cold cycles and snow…at least until March. Plus, if you’re like me, you often feel more depressed during the winter. Psychologists don’t know why this is, but it is and it, in and of itself, is depressing. It’s an endless cycle of sadness. As if to make things worse, it gets dark at 6:00 pm in Indiana during the winter months. So, at 6:00 pm, I can be sitting at my house watching a Family Guy rerun and realize that my day is already over, despite the fact I’m probably not going to bed for five more hours.
But (and I’ll say this as many times as need be to get the point across) the universe does not exist to perpetuate our happiness. In fact, the universe really could care less that I don’t like being cold in the winter or that I prefer spring and summer. The universe just is, and whether I live or dies today is inconsequential to it. The only way to successfully live is to realize this and quit trying to expect the universe to conform to our standards, as if humans were what made the universe go round.
But Chris, aren’t we what makes the universe go round in a way?
Ah, young grasshopper, you have learned an important truth here. There is an old saying that questions whether a tree falling in the woods would make any sound if no one was there to here it. The answer is no. A sound imply someone to hear the sound. Without someone capable of hearing the sound, there is no sound to be heard and, as a result, we can conclude that no, the tree did not make a sound. It did make the necessary vibrations necessary to form a sound in a human or an animal ear, but it did not make a sound per se.
Yet trees do not exist to make sounds for us (or to serve as lumber for our building needs or to serve as shade for our picnics, etc.). Trees exist for their own sake. If we became extinct today, trees could go on living, just as they continued living after the extinction of the dinosaurs. Maybe there will be another species evolve one day with the capability of hearing the same sounds we did; maybe not, though. In either case, the tree will continue to exist for its own sake.
So, next time you’re complaining about the weather or the way things are, remember: other things do not exist for your sake; they are only usable by you insofar as you are able to manipulate them into tools (Heidegger’s concept of Vorhandenheit). But, even if you manipulate them into a tool, they still do not exist for your sake, but only appear that way in your perception of things.
