Albert Camus writes that existence is an act of rebellion to challenge the hollowness of life by struggling to achieve essence that makes it meaningful. Apathy is condemned. Existence ushers ennui if it is stagnant and static not striving to search for essence that brings vitality in ones life for living happily. It is the forward movement of existence to achieve essence that embellishes it with fascination and makes it worthy living. Living for something drives life and eliminates existential boredom. Man suffers due to immobility of his life having no aim to achieve leading him to action. When evolution halts, life loses its charm and turns meaningless. Search for meaning makes life meaningful. So man struggles and suffers to keep the mobility of life active. If we don’t understand the dialectical nature of life, this struggle for movement will also pour forth solicitude in our lives. We should comply to Sartre`s proclamation, “existence precedes essence”. Existence needs to be welcome as an opportunity to achieve heights of essence. Without essence, our existence is incomplete and full of anxiety. We exist to achieve completeness by making our lives worthy by making thoughtful choices. Understanding the interplay of pain and ease mitigates the intensity of suffering to achieve completeness. The feeling of incompleteness keeps us restive. Hence, our life is a journey from ignorance to knowledge, incompleteness to completeness, sorrow to joy, restraint to liberty and meaninglessness to meaning and existence to essence. The struggle continues and stops only with death. In the next world, there are no struggles but only remunerations of our struggles and sufferings.
T.S. Eliot mourns meaninglessness of life as, “ we are the hollow men, we are the stuffed men”. He describes the despair and dejection of people who failed to make sense of their lives. They remained only existence and could not struggle to find out their lost essence. Jean Paul Sartre believes that life is a struggle to attach essence to ones existence. It is this essence that brings joy and makes life complete but in the way of attaining essence, we have to confront multiple challenges and setbacks. The attainment of essence is possible only after overcoming these setbacks. Separating oneself from God brings nothingness into life. Setting ones life on the divine ordinances is the only way to bestow meaning to our lives because essence issue forth only from God who is the absolute being of our universe. Hence, Sartre`s leap of faith is mandatory because our choice and liberty can’t bring meaning to our life unless we execute the divine commandments.
Great English poet George Herbert wrote a beautiful poem, “The Pulley”, in which he writes that at the time of creation, God bestowed man with various endowments like strength, beauty, wisdom, honor, pleasure but when he reached to “rest”, he stopped. He wanted to keep man incomplete. This sense of incompleteness forces man to return to God for peace and rest. We grapple with life to exude meaning out of it but every time it pushes us back to God. God is overjoyed every time life headlong hurls us down due to its invincible challenges and setbacks. We resort to God and admire his majesty and pray to him to save us from anxiety and depression and give us peace of mind and heart.
Allama Tabatabai says that life is a journey from incompleteness to completeness but it does not come gratis. One needs to work for it. One needs to figure out ways and avenues to achieve this completeness and it can’t be achieved without God because he creates both existence and essence. Osho says that our unfulfilled goals and dreams throw us into the feeling of being incomplete. When any of our goal is unfulfilled, we undergo solicitude. It brings suffering into our life and keeps us restive throughout life.
Essences are hence offered by faith. Devoting ones life to God and fulfilling his assigned obligations brings meaning to our lives. Struggling to find out meaning from any other sources like wealth, job, houses, cars and other possessions will further derail us from the right source of meaning. It is faith that minimizes the pain of existence and gives us solace. We should not forget God in the mayhem of life because it will only intensify our suffering and fill us with hopelessness that is a sin. Lets hope that things will be better in future in our lives.

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