Remembering the past: do you find it sad or satisfying to look backward? You’re probably thinking, “Obviously, that depends on what’s being remembered -happy or sad times”. But is that the only view? Is there a way in which memory itself -the very FACT of the past- always shadows life in the present?
The past is what make people who they are, and regretting something that has formed your personality and your beliefs is illogical. We are what we decide to be, the difficult times that we have experienced in the past have happened because we decided, we chose for them to happen, and if we realize later that they were mistaken decisions, all we can do is learn from them, not regret them. If they have been hard or sad or full anger, we must see the bright, the positive side of our bad experiences: we wont make the same mistake again, and is we do, we will learn it twice, or ever three times, not to make the same mistake again.
The past is something that we can be either happy or sad about. I think that the happy times are those that we remember with joy, love, and happiness. The sad times, on the other hand, are those that have made us stronger and wiser, and even though they have been difficult to overcome, they are opportunities of change that have led us to life our lives in a better way.
We must look at the past as a whole, because the past is what we are right now. The present is the opportunity that life wives us to change and improve what we are. And the future is the hope and the goals that we have to work for. There obviously are sad times, but we must overcome them and try to fight for our future and our expectations, because the past is a tool for our future, and it will only make us stronger and better in every aspect that we need to change.
Read Tears, Idle Tears, by Lord Tennyson
After reading this poem, answer this: How can tears be “idle” -can you cry without knowing why?
I think that tears are useless when there is no motive for them. Tears are the expression of the soul to let our emotions of sadness and regret come to the surface. There are a lot people that cry for no reason, or worst: for a bad and stupid reason. There are people who cry for other people, while those others are worthless and do not deserve the tears being cried.
Of course that you can cry without knowing why. There are times when you feel desperate or alone, and your body and mind want to let these feeling of sadness go away, and crying is the answer to express these feelings and these emotions.
Tears can be idle or worthless when people cry only to call the attention of others. There are times when tears are idle because the person is expressing feeling with no basis of existence, or because these reasons are illogical or unneeded. People who cry for stupid reasons are just wasting their tears and their energy, while they could be doing something better.
What do you think the “divine despair” is in line 2? Could you relate it to Adam and Eve’s fall in Genesis -would that story explain the speaker’s existential sadness?
I see the “divine despair” as something brought about by human beings themselves because they have done something wrong. There is no predestination, there is no destiny already written for people: we make our own future, we decide what we want to become, and we are the sole and only builders of our life and opportunities.
The Genesis tells us the story about Eve and Adam, and the fatal mistake, or divine despair, is brought about by Eve, because she finds herself trapped between her humane desires and her heavenly expectations. She plays and tries to become better than God, and she does this by committing a sin. This sin is the fatal flaw that brings about the divine despair. This is the punishment that they receive because of Eve-s actions.
This story could explain the speaker-s sadness because we are forced to commit evil things in order to learn from life and to fight for the eternal life after death. It is obvious that when we sin, we are trapped in our own world and in our own mind of guilt, and this is what the author sees as the problem of existentialism.
Does the contradiction in the phrase “Death in Life” (line 20) make sense to you? Explain. What is your response to this line? Have you ever felt this way?
The contradiction of “death in life” makes a lot of sense to me. I think that being death in life is living but with no purpose, with no love, without friends and joy in your existence. It is the worst thing to be death in life because you are just a piece with no sense in the universe, and you are neutral for everybody, unimportant.
I feel that this feeling of being death in life has been experienced by all of us because sometimes we feel out of palace or alone and all we want to do is to actually be alone and to meditate by ourselves. I have felt this way many times, especially when the problems and troubles of life manage to overwhelm my mind and spirit, and all I see is darkness. During these times, I try to remember that there is light at the end of the tunnel, and it is that hope what keeps me alive, and this hope is the Faith that I carry around with me.
