*Editor’s Note: This article contains some strong language. 

“To know thyself is the beginning of wisdom.” – Socrates

“Why should those who suffer ever be born?” – Book of Job

“There must be more to life than this.” – Freddie Mercury

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People have been through a lot in the past couple of years. 

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many lost loved ones, jobs, and social connections. During that time, we also saw the murder of George Floyd, political extremism, rioting, and an attempt to undermine our republic by the sitting president. 

The future is uncertain at all levels. There is war in Europe, the Middle East, and the risk of conflict with China. The threat of nuclear destruction has entered the common imagination for the first time since the Cold War. Record heat waves remind us of the existential threat of climate change. At home, there is still uncertainty over an economic recession. Workers are psychologically disengaging from their work and “quiet-quitting.” 

Mental health has declined overall, suicide rates are up, and people feel lonelier than ever.

But the pace of the world hasn’t slowed down. Burgeoning technologies such as AI are poised to revolutionize the fabric of society for better or for worse. Efficiency and innovation are the name of the game. There is now a downwards sloping toilet that companies can purchase to decrease the time employees spend in the bathroom.

The breakneck speed of the world today is best expressed by JFK’s 1963 moon speech:

“Condense, if you will, the 50,000 years of man’s recorded history in a time span of but a half century. Stated in these terms, we know very little about the first 40 years, except at the end of them advanced man had learned to use the skins of animals to cover them. 

Then about 10 years ago, under this standard, man emerged from his caves to construct other kinds of shelter. Only 5 years ago man learned to write and use a cart with wheels. Christianity began less than 2 years ago. The printing press came this year, and then less than 2 months ago, during this whole 50-year span of human history, the steam engine provided a new source of power. Newton explored the meaning of gravity. Last month electric lights and telephones and automobiles and airplanes became available. 

Only last week did we develop penicillin and television and nuclear power, and now if America’s new spacecraft succeeds in reaching Venus, we will have literally reached the stars before midnight tonight. This is a breathtaking pace, and such a pace cannot help but create new ills as it dispels old, new ignorance, new problems, new dangers.” 

Nevertheless, there are deep questions that carry on throughout time, no matter the changes and challenges a society faces. 

These questions revolve around the ways humans face suffering, the ways we view life, the ways we find meaning, and the ways we keep on going. 

I wanted to see what people today thought about these questions.

In this project, I anonymously interviewed people from a wide variety of backgrounds—students, professors, service workers, immigrants, men, women, young people, old people, and more. Unlike my “Working” interview project, I decided not to include their job titles next to their quotations. This is to leave more up to the reader’s imagination.

Some answers are pessimistic, some are optimistic, and some are weird. But all represent a slice of humanity.  

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1) What Questions Keep You Up at Night? 

“Financial security, health of my mother, the mortality of loved ones. Aimlessness.” 

“Questions about my past and the unknown of what’s to come. I know that’s sort of like two opposites, but it’s really a combination. Sometimes it’s about reminiscing, sometimes it’s about looking forward, either out of anxiety or due to excitedness. To me, it’s mainly about the past just because I feel like life in Austin is so different from life back home in terms of family and daily life.”

“What my two 20-something year old kids will do with their lives. Sometimes, I have dreams that they’re still little, and in the dream, I feel like I still have a chance to mold them and shape them into people I want them to be. Then I wake up and discover that they get to be the people who they want to be, which is the way it should be. But parents still have anxieties about their kids.” 

“One thing I do worry about is what would I do if the things I cherish the most are taken away —  so my family and my children. I mean, I love my wife to death, but I think I would handle her death a little better than my kids. Don’t tell her I said that.” 

“I’m scared of the zombie apocalypse, like weirdly scared. It’s a strange fear. And I know it’s not gonna happen. When I was 10, I watched “The Walking Dead” at my uncle’s house, and it just, like, messed with my brain. I just don’t know what I would do. What would I do? Oh, my God. I think the illness part of the zombie apocalypse is what gets me. With all the other types of monsters, if you get attacked you could survive. The idea of being infected freaks me out.”

“What does God want of human beings? Does God exist?”

“The universe is kind of a big place. I wonder if I’m as significant as a particle of sand in the Bahamas? It’s kind of intimidating. I also wonder whether we are the only planet with life.”

“Sometimes I’m excited to live a long life and be happy, but then I wonder, what if something happens tomorrow? Am I actually happy with my life? Do I want to do something else?”

2) If you had to draw life in a picture or diagram, what would you draw?

3) What Is One Thing That Bothers You About Life today?

“With technology, there’s such a capacity for violence. I think that’s what bothers me most in modern society. 

Everything feels so dirty. You walk in the streets in the city, and you can’t even wear white shoes because it’s just so grimy. Everything is so gross. When I’m walking my dog, sometimes he will try to drink water from dirty puddles off the ground. I just feel that this is not how things are really supposed to be. 

And with technology and social media, it’s really cool the things that they allow us to do. But I feel like we’re losing so much of our humanity. We can’t make connections anymore. I’ll be in the elevator and people will just be on their phones. And I do it too, because it can be awkward. But I just wonder, imagine if we just talk to each other—think about the missed connections that we could have because everyone’s so focused on other things.”

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“Tech. It gets into your head. Makes it harder to concentrate. Enjoy life.”

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“Not much to be honest. The selfish side of me thinks about it this way. If things bother me, it’s just gonna ruin my day. And the world is gonna still rotate. If I didn’t like the fact that the sky was blue, am I gonna get upset about the sky being blue? I’d rather just move on with my day. 

But when it comes to things on a personal scale, I get bothered. For instance, if a distant friend loses a relative or something—obviously, that bothers me to an extent, and I feel I have to go above and beyond to help that person. But at the same time, on a world scale, life is unfair. A lot of people get the short stick of life. So I can’t save everybody, except for the people I know, personally, whom I can help. 

I would love to help. If I see a homeless person, if I can personally go help them, maybe give them 10 bucks or something, buy them dinner, I’d love to do that. But then at the same time, on a greater scale, I wouldn’t be bothered by the amount of homelessness in society. Because on that scale, I can’t do much. I can affect the world only on a small scale.”

4) If Everything Turns to Dust, What’s The Point of Life?

“If everything turns to dust, who the fuck cares? I might as well live my life. Have fun now. 

What’s the point questioning what the meaning of life is? 1,000 years in the future, I guess everything will turn to dust. But right now, I’m enjoying the moments that I have with the people I love. I think that’s the point of it all. There doesn’t have to be some huge legacy that even humanity has on the world. 

I think it actually might be better if we don’t have a huge legacy on the world. Hopefully one day we will turn to dust. And then the world can go back to what it was because we fuck everything up.”

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“Dust can still have impacts. I believe the point of life is to impact. Impact others, impact the future, impact our Earth, do whatever you can to impact. Because it’s true, your one life in perspective is meaningless. But your impact could be meaningful in ways beyond your imagination.”

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“I think that no matter how much suffering someone experiences in life, that there was something good about a few moments of life. I also think that if everything just turns to dust and there turns out to be no real clinical meaning to life that it is a downer, and it does subtract from the meaning of life. But we certainly act like there’s goodness to life. 

People who are moving toward death because of the terminal disease want more life because there is something good about it. I do wonder about babies who are born with terrible birth defects who spend a few days in the hospital and then die—do they have any sense of their mother’s love and was there any goodness in their life? I want to think that there was, but it’s hard to say. However, the fact that we act like there’s meaning to life—the fact that we act like life is good and desirable and valuable suggests that we think there is more to life than dust.” 

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“I don’t know. They’re good things you can do. But I don’t think everything’s gonna turn to dust. Human souls will remain.”

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“The Earth has existed for 4.5 billion years or so. A human’s life lifespan averages from 80 to 90 years. 

Realistically, in those 80 years, it makes me think, am I here to actually make a significant change to life? Do I actually care about making the world a better place or just enjoying it for myself? Maybe if I want to have kids, maybe I want to do something for them. But then, there’s always a conflicting selfish and selfless side of myself. And it seems each side will give a different answer. 

Realistically, if you ask the selfish side, life means nothing. Life means fun, enjoying my time, and dying as a villain. If you ask the selfless side of myself, life is about enjoying the impermanence and making the impermanence better for people. Making life as good for everybody as possible.”

5) If You Could Go Back in Time to Live or Relive a Moment, What Would it Be? 

“I feel like I’m pretty satisfied, at least with all the decisions in my life. All the decisions I’ve made have led me to be who I am and I like who I am now.”

“I would have gone back and thanked my first grade teacher. She changed the educational trajectory that I had. She gave me some hope to hold onto. I have a learning disorder, and so my elementary school experience was not great. Most of my teachers didn’t like me. They were really mean, but my first grade teacher, she was this old woman and she was so sweet. She was nice. She was the only teaching experience from preschool through sixth grade where I didn’t feel judged. I really loved her.”

“The moment I turned 18, I just said fuck it. Dropped out of high school against my mother’s wishes and got my GED on my own while fighting against the stigma that comes with being a dropout. It wasn’t even that hard. I passed every test like on college level.”

“I would say the first time I left my parents to go to preschool. I kinda remember it but I’ve also heard the stories—I was bawling like a baby. Obviously a super saddening moment, I’m curious to go back and see what exactly was going through my mind and compare it to what was going through my mind a few weeks ago when I moved into UT without family. Both times I thought my life was going to change drastically and I’m curious how I was able to handle it back then emotionally. I’m also curious to see how much of an impact my family had on my life at both stages of my life.”

“The 1996 World Series when the Yankees beat the Braves. That was pretty good.”

“My girlfriend, she’s studying to become a vet. She was an intern that ran a rescue farm with all sorts of animals. I think there were around 800 dogs, 200 cats, horses, bulls. It was such a sad state—a lot of dogs were injured or given away by the owners. But it was incredible to see how even though a dog might not have a limb, it would still try everything to jump on your lap. It’s really an enriching experience.”

6) What is One Thing That You Hold Onto For Hope?

“About seven years ago, I went through this really terrible time of anxiety. We had sold our house and moved into an apartment because we thought we wanted a different house. I think it was just a bad decision financially and logistically for the family. It was a bad decision, a bad time, and I felt like I had taken my family out of a fairly comfortable situation and thrown us into total chaos. 

I was distraught and depressed for about three months. But I came out of that thanks to my wife’s support, other friends, and my doctor. Looking at my life from the outside, other people would have said it doesn’t look that bad, but my experience of those three months was pretty horrible. I wasn’t sleeping or eating—and so knowing that there was a way out of that still provides hope that there are ways out.”

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“Family—the one that I have right now and the one that I hope to have in the future. What keeps me motivated and working is to be the best father that I can to my children. Be able to provide for everything but more importantly be able to give them the knowledge to conquer the world. And what keeps me motivated is the thought of being a good son to my parents. Someone who could live out the dreams that they couldn’t as immigrants and someone that they can always rely on and be proud of regardless of how they are feeling.”

“One is a grander meta level of belief and that is my religious tradition. The fact that we have this idea that Jesus Christ died for us and represents our salvation—that I hold on to.” 

“When both my kids unfortunately came to learn of some of the worst of my faults, but both told me that they still love me.”

“I like teaching students. I like when I improve their lives and their way of thinking about things.”

“I don’t believe in any religion. I’m not religious at all. But I believe that everybody has some path. I feel like even if something doesn’t go your way, there’s always a silver lining to it, or something better kept for you. What gives me hope is the belief that everything works out. Even if I have a bad exam, if I don’t get into my dream uni, everything will work out. And everything that’s happened has brought me and made me who I am right now. I just believe that everything works out for everybody, even though most people don’t see that. But you have to let go of a lot of expectations to believe.”

“The idea that humans are inherently good. Despite what I believe about society, I think that as individuals, we tend to have this positive trust in people. There are always exceptions, and there’s always bad shit in the world. And I think society can be a corrupting force on that. But I think humans are inherently good. And you can see the good in the world. It’s just that structurally, society makes it hard for that to flourish. But you can see good in people.”