At War with Myself
There is a refrain I say to myself, something I likely have never admitted to anyone: “I hate my body.”
I say this to myself quite often and without the gravity the word “hate” should imply because this simply is a fact of my existence.
A good friend texted recently, sharing very dark morning thoughts and ending with #upliftingthoughts. I wasn’t being flippant but empathetic when I replied: “Well … uh … yep … done that, do that … it is called existentialism.”
Discovering and working through existential philosophy and literature throughout my undergraduate years and into the first decade or so of my career as a teacher was incredibly important for me.
Liberating.
As I followed up with my friend, I explained that existentialism, in my opinion, gets a bad rap as a negative philosophy—confused with nihilism (in the same way “communism” is conflated with “totalitarianism” in the U.S.). My reading of existentialism, I explained, was that humans had to acknowledge that our passions are our sufferings in order to move past that fact of human CONTINUE READING: At War with Myself – radical eyes for equity
