I’ll be completely honest and say that though philosophy is quite interesting, sometimes, I feel like it seems to hate me. I find a lot of things subjects in school pretty interesting, but none of them seems to dislike me the way philosophy does. For example, I find accounting a pretty interesting subject (yes, I find it quite interesting so sue me haha), so when I push myself to study, I seem to understand things eventually. But that is sadly not the case in philosophy. Though I push myself to keep reading, listening in class and studying, I still find it ridiculously challenging to grasp the concepts sometimes.
But there are certain concepts that seem more graspable. Last Thursday, we talked about il y a. Now this is something I found amazingly easier to grasp, easier to understand. If I am not mistaken, this seems to be the middle ground, that moment when you are “caught in the middle”, that moment when you ask, “should I or should I not?” or “is it or isn’t it?” Maybe I found this one easier to grasp simply because it is so easy to relate to. I realized that maybe I have been stuck in il y a for way too long. In this very moment that I am writing, I am actually trying to fight and overcome this state of il y a. Yes, I love to write, but I guess I never actually wrote anything for this class blog ever. Why not? It is probably out of fear. Will I get judged? Yeah, I probably will, but why should I still write anyway? Because it is my passion and I have something to say. Isn’t that enough of a reason? Simply because I can and I want to. And when I finish writing this, I have to overcome yet another state of il y a. Should I send it or is it enough that I have poured out what I need to say by typing this down? Well, if you happen to read this, then I guess I overcame this state of il y a as well. I defeated that fear.
But something in the back of my mind is still bothering me. Most examples I have heard in class, read on other blog posts and even the ones I gave here pretty much have the same idea. By choosing to just do it, in a way, we overcome this fear, we consider ourselves to have won the battle. But should this always be the case? What if in that state of il y a, we chose to stay silent? What if we chose to not do it? Does that mean we have lost against this fear that probably causes this state of il y a? How about in this example? Say, you have strong feelings for someone. You are sure, this is what they call love and you have found it. But there is just one problem. You know he/she has someone else. So you are in this state of il y a. You are caught in the middle. Should you tell him/her or not? If you do, you MIGHT just get your fairytale ending, but at the expense of someone else. If you don’t, does that mean you are not strong enough because you chose not to do it? (If you don’t understand the example I gave just now, listen to this song, which perfectly describes that story I just gave.)
