The Symphony of Strings: On Life, Faith, and the Tapestry of Being

What does it mean to exist? 

For as long as I can remember, I have been haunted by the questions: What does it  mean to exist? Why am I here? What is life, and what am I within it? I’ve analyzed these  questions with relentless rigor, only to find my efforts circling back to nothingness.  Everywhere I searched, I found no grand revelation, only an aching void. As Nietzsche wrote,  "And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you" (Beyond Good and Evil  146). The universe, it seemed, was an accident, and consciousness—this strange ability to  question our own being—a misstep in nature’s evolution.  

We might attempt a simple explanation to answer those questions by “I exist because  my parents gave birth to me.” Yet this response merely defers the question rather than  answering it. Why do your parents exist? Because your grandparents did—and so the cycle  continues. Press the question further, and we arrive at a chain of regress that ultimately lands  at the Big Bang, where we might say, “Existence began.” But even then, when we ask why  existence began, we find ourselves circling back to square one. Suppose, then, I claim I exist  to give life to my future children. We’ve merely redirected the dilemma forward, toward the  future and, inevitably, toward nothingness. The inquiry still terminates in silence. And  perhaps that is the heart of the matter: the past offers no final meaning, and the future no  definitive resolution, for both dissolve into eventual endings. 

The essay begins with a single inquiry: What if meaning is not something found in  origin or destination, but something woven from the experience of being itself? Can we live as if life matters, even when certainty escapes us?

The Flaw in Pursuit for Meaning 

At first, this realization was crushing. If existence itself had no intrinsic meaning, then  what point was there to live, to love, to effort? Was I merely a mistake, lost between the twin  abysses of creation and oblivion? I swam through my own thoughts as through a starless sea,  searching, doubting, raging against the silence of the cosmos. The more I sought answers  from the past and the future, the more the void deepened. 

I had exhausted every rational road, peeled apart every philosophical framework I  could grasp. Meaning hid from me in both past and future, and my pursuit left me hollow.  Yet, perhaps it is as Heidegger implied: being is not simply to think, but to be-in-the-world (cp.3). And it was then, in the silence left by that collapse, that a new awareness bloomed. 

The Moment of Awakening 

Like a lightning strike across a dark sky, I realized that I am experiencing. Not merely  thinking, not merely surviving—but feeling, listening, being. The rain no longer merely fell  against my skin; I heard its whispers, I felt its song. Beyond the binary of meaning and  meaninglessness, I discovered the profound richness of experience itself. 

How could such realization arise? It did not come from argument, but from  immersion. It came not from solving the question, but from surrendering to the moment. As  Merleau-Ponty suggested, perception itself is a form of being. The world discloses itself not  through logic, but through embodied openness (58). 

Thinking Is Not Enough

Yet even this discovery raised new doubts. If all is fleeting, what is the value of  experiencing in a world destined to crumble into dust? Our search for meaning often leads us  astray because we demand answers from places that cannot answer us: from the dead past,  from the unborn future, from abstractions too vast for a single mind to grasp. We seek a  finality that existence, by its very nature, cannot provide. 

René Descartes famously declared, "Cogito, ergo sum"—"I think, therefore I am"  (13). Our existence is affirmed by our consciousness, our ability to question, to reflect, to 

feel. But what Descartes hints at—and what I came to understand—is that being is not simply  about thinking. It is about weaving: weaving our moments of joy and sorrow, weaving our  hopes and despairs into the vast, intricate tapestry of immediate existence. 

How to Answer the Void 

Imagine each moment of experience as a thread, each emotion a color, each  connection with others a knot tying lives together. Our lives are not isolated strands, but part  of an immense, living fabric—one we can neither fully see nor fully comprehend. And  though individual threads may fray or fade, the patterns they create endure. Even after death,  the influence of a life—its loves, its creations, its kindnesses and cruelties—persists, woven  into the lives of others, into culture, into memory, into the ongoing story of being. 

Søren Kierkegaard once argued that truth is subjective: what matters most is not  objective certainty, but the passionate commitment to live authentically within  uncertainty (Concluding Unscientific Postscript ch.2). This idea bolstered my growing  intuition: that even if the universe offers no fixed meaning, it is still up to me to live as if  meaning matters. The act of living with sincerity and courage, even amid doubt, is itself an  answer to the void. 

Why the Far Future Does Not Matter 

It is tempting to despair when we realize that in a million years, no one may  remember our names. But why should a million years matter more than the now? If my  presence is irrelevant to the far future, then likewise the far future is irrelevant to me.  Meaning is not found in endurance across infinite time; it is found in presence and  experience. 

Albert Camus, reflecting on the myth of Sisyphus, famously declared that we must  imagine Sisyphus happy—that is, finding joy not in escaping futility, but in embracing it  (55). Sisyphus's eternal labor is not a defeat but a triumph, precisely because he asserts his  humanity against an absurd universe. Likewise, the act of weaving meaning into our lives— knowing it may not "last"—is an act of rebellion.

Moments Are Eternal 

We often think linearly—birth, life, death—a beginning, a middle, an end. But life is  not a line; it is a symphony of moments, each complete in itself. Moments are not endless, but  they are eternal in their own way, unmeasurable, unrepeatable, uniquely ours, something that  even the void couldn’t take from us. 

Even if existence is an accident, even if the universe is indifferent, we are not. We  care, we feel, we weave. And that act of caring, of weaving experience into meaning, is itself  the answer we seek. 

Jean-Paul Sartre argued that existence precedes essence: we are not born with a  preordained purpose; instead, we create our essence through our actions (20). At first, this  realization feels like a heavy burden—the so-called "condemn to be free" (cp.1). But it is also  liberating: if no one else defines my meaning, then I have the infinite responsibility, and the  infinite possibility, to weave my own tapestry. 

Faith as the Missing Ingredient 

But to truly live this truth, one final ingredient is needed—an ingredient many  philosophers overlook: faith. Kierkegaard on his work Fear and Trembling described the “leap of faith” —the courageous and subjective decision to commit fully to meaning and  value, not for reason able to assures us of their certainty, but precisely because it cannot. The  leap itself is not blind, but bold. It acknowledges the absurdity and ambiguity of existence,  yet affirms life in spite of them. Only faith can do that: faith that our weaving matters, faith  that presence is precious, faith that love, beauty, kindness, and creation are worthwhile even  if the void is certain. 

Without this faith, we risk falling into what Nietzsche called "passive nihilism"—a  resignation to meaninglessness that drains life of its vitality (Will to Power 21). But with it,  we resist the abyss. With it, we create. 

Consider Viktor Frankl, the psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor, who insisted that  meaning is not something we invent arbitrarily, but something we discover through  commitment, love,suffering, and action (75). Frankl's words taught me that even in the most 

horrifying conditions imaginable, life retains the possibility of meaning. That meaning is not  handed to us; it is forged. 

Toward the Eternal 

Thus, existence is not meaningless—it is meaning itself, unfolding. We are not  mistakes; we are the weavers of the universe’s own self-portrait. 

When I walk through a crowded street, or hear a song sung by someone long dead, or  see the smile of a friend, I realize I am witnessing the tapestry in motion. The strings of  countless lives, woven together, forming culture, language, art, history—and me, a living part  of it. 

Even if one day I am forgotten, I have lived. I have weaved my colors into the grand  tapestry. And—that alone—is enough.