Memory accompanies time in a jog, stained in bodily sweat. A drop of sweat into the centre of the ocean. The centre of ocean used ( ) to separate the sweat. ( ) separated ( ) away, the centre of the ocean became empty, time jumped in. ( ) arrived at the beach, just when there is a man taking a stroll. Suddenly the walking stopped, the tip of his toes ran into ( ), ( ) disappeared. Man stared at his toe – begin—remembered his forgotten eyes.
***

One day, Antoine (1) came by the sea. He picked up a small stone and was preparing to throw it towards the water, but nonetheless at that moment, he felt fear. He finally threw the stone away and left. But the sense of fear remained. A beer, a face, a seat, a sea gull filled Antoine with annoyance. He finally understand the irrationalness of the world, revealed that the existent of people and things are coincidental just the same as the existence of a glass of beer, a stone, a seat or a sea gull.


This kind of coincidence does not contain any pre proved meaning or purpose, things were just there. Every thing is an appearance of its phenomena, behind this appearance, nothing can be revealed. When people are faced with the irrational world, the feeling of absurdity slowly rise. In a world with no purpose, how does one survive? And how would this person give his or her own life some meaning? In an absurd world, we can not put things into reasonable categories. Results of events are in the order of chaos. People who exist in such a world possesses no essence or nature, beside to molding oneself, humans are not anything. To review it from another perspective, humans are original since there is no such thing as essence of human nether the limit it contained. Human are not anything, yet they can be anything This is to say, man is free. A man can choose what he wants to become. They have not been decided, yet they are waiting for themselves to decide. However, this freedom does not provide life its meaning. Freedom is the condition of existing on its own. Freedom is being, and being is nothingness, what to be is yet to be decided by the people themselves.
“Man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world—and defines himself afterwards.” (2)
In the world of nothingness, how can one live? And how can one who is living provide meaning of his own existence.

For Martin Heidegger, World is not the traditional scientific world. The scientific world is an objectively conceptualized world. Under this perspective, the world is an abstract time space where human and the world were brutally separated to become the self and the outside. Under the two parts, the self is separated from all the other things apart from itself. The self is solitarily lonely. The world would still exists even humans do not exist. The world’s insistence will not be affected by people’s temporality. To Heidegger, the World is the fundamental experience of human existence. (Being in the world). The World is another name for people; both subjects are at equal ends of each other. Heidegger’s World is people. A World without people does not exist. It is similar to that of Sports world or the Shakespeare world which means the same field and the same specific interest or activity. Shakespeare world will not exist if Shakespeare was never born. In another word, Heidegger’s World is a common field of human concern. If people disappear from this World, the World would as well, fade with this fact.

Under the definition of World, human and world live intimately. Human is then been suggested that it would not without purpose because they are a whole and are self contented. Then why in reality, people feel lonely and are drifting in doubt about their existence? Heidegger suggested loneliness is an unsatisfied state of being with the other: that one’s World is World together owned with the other people. One’s World is not singular; in contrast, one’s World is a communal region of the multiples Worlds of the others. Loneliness refers to unsatisfied social interaction. To clarify this, we may introduce the example of Sartre’s analysis of social relation. To Sartre, social relation is about suppressing people’s sadism as well as being suppressed by others. There’s no true investigate between people. People struggle individually to establish their own freedom. “Hell is the other” when I is alone he centered himself among things and objects which follows and obey his will create his own territory. But when the other enters this territory and looks at I, its territory will then collapse. Not only the objects and things will be pulled into the territory of the other, also I will be involved in the other’s track, downgraded as an object, a thing which unauthorized his freedom of subjectivity. I look back to the other when I is conscious of the lost of subjectivity freedom, and transfer the other back into object. By doing that, I resurveyed his subjectivity back and re-establish the territory which he is its centre. The transformed other is not forever however; he’s prepared to repel anytime. In result, human relation becomes a cycle of suppressing the subjectivity of others. I ensure himself by suppressing the subjectivity of the other, and the other ensures himself by suppressing the subjectivity of I, and I suppressing the other…. as is this, time runs out of its own.


After revealing the reason of human loneliness and doubt about life, do we now have a hint towards the illuminate of the meaning of existence? The illuminant of the meaning of existence, reminds me of Sabina( in fact what makes me think of life’s brilliance is of many people, but the one that stays with me, that forever remains in my entire thinking and feeling, revealing her brilliance, integrate with my life’s scattered experience or wonders.)
“For Sabina, living in truth, lying neither to ourselves nor to others was possible only away from the public: the moment someone keeps an eye on what we do, we involuntarily make allowances for that eye, and nothing we do is truthful. Having a public, keeping a public in mind, means living in lies.” (3)
To Sabina, truth is different from objective truth. Truth is the reflection of an ideal of subjectivity. Truth is what Sabina has expected herself – an ancient, perfect ideology and her loyalty to it. Sabina’s following of truth had distant her from her society, since society is in form of objectivity. Objectivity pierced Sabina. In her eyes, objectivity are false signals, it suppresses and leveling the individual significance. To Sabina, they are kitsch – the collective fallen innocence. Unfortunately, there is no way to avoid kitsch since the world is a collective of objectivities. Living on earth with no exception implies one has to be part of kitsch. Sabina chose to escape after she revealed the reality – the constant betrayals which wrote the life of Sabina, where she inherited and established this will: from her betrayal to her family her love and her own country. But, the nature of betrayal is tragedy. The one who betrays comes from the same origin as the one who is being betrayed, no matter how disgusted Sabina thought about kitsch. She could never deny herself as part of kitsch. But is this same reason therefore made possible the target for betrays the circumstance to escape from and the meaning of her act.

The term betrayal itself is covered with hidden atmosphere agendas; the action of betrayal is always secretive. No matter how radical Sabina’s presentation of betrayal is, or how profound it was in content, Sabina acted in its hidden obscurity. From what could be read in the book, the form of Sabina’s betrayals are repeated escapism: to betray her family—she left home and went to Prague, to betray love—she left her husband and her lover, only willing to be a mistress of her beloved, to betray her country—she left Czech to America and hid her identity. There was never any sense of challenge in Sabina’s bedrail and neither was there a high note to repel. The betray of Sabina is total retrieval. Betray such as this does not ever long for the understanding of the other individual.


One may argues, the example of Sabina does not seem to have picture the meaning of existence figuratively enough. Even if it does, the example of Sabina is pessimistic: Sabina betrays escapes and isolates herself. However all of these are superficial when we understand what is meant by kitsch.
“Kitsch is the absolute denial of shit, in both the literal and the figurative senses of the word; kitsch excludes everything from its purview which is essentially unacceptable in human existence.”(4)
But then what is wrong with shit? In reality, shit is necessary; shit may even be the closest proof of human’s existence. If human omit shit therefore they are ignorant and pretentious. In the kitsch world, the existence of man is granted, it is a “categorical agreement with being” (5) —the existence of man is ideal. The kitsch world is the world in its simplication. A human is not supposed to rethink their existence or the world they are living in. In the kitsch world, man obeys morals, loving their friends, families and countries but remains numb. In the kitsch world, human live with ideals and expectations but their passions are suspicious. If one decides to rebel in realization the world as kitsch, then one must abandon the vague supports from kitsch (these may be standard of morals, laws and systems of countries or religions.)Who is willing to rebel, who then becomes the most adventurous and the bravest.

That is why I think the example of Sabina is enough to prove the meaning of existence, since she lives honestly to her will though he realized the imperfections of reality, facing the irrationality of the world, she lives in sprit of a rebel, would not let hypocrisy systems of laws violate her wish for truth. She did not naively, aggressively picture to change the world, nor chase after other’s approval or sympathy. Sabina surges up in the world define herself afterward and hold on to it subtly. And it is this holding of her own will, which gives life a certain weight and dignity, and the most solid meaning of human existence.

***
In The Myth of Sisyphus, Sisyphus was condemned by gods to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain. But since its own weight, the stone falls back. To Camus, there’s no more dreadful punishment than hopeless labor as this, but he soon claims, “It is during that return, that pause, that Sisyphus interests me. A face that toils so close to stones is already stone itself! I see that man going back down with a heavy yet measured step toward the torment of which he will never know the end. That hour like a breathing-space which returns as surely as his suffering, that is the hour of consciousness. At each of those moments when he leaves the heights and gradually sinks toward the lairs of the gods, he is superior to his fate. He is stronger than his rock.”(6)




(1) Antoine Roquentin—Hero in Nauses by –Jean Paul Sartre
(2) Jean Paul Sartre—Sartre, Existentialism Is a Humanism, in W. Kaufmann, Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre. P.165
(3) Milan Kundera—The Unbearable Lightness of Being P.109
(4) Milan Kundera—The Unbearable Lightness of Being P.241
(5) Milan Kundera—The Unbearable Lightness of Being P.241
(6) Albert Camus—The Myth of Sisyphus, in W. Kaufmann, Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre. P.377


Bibliography
Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre-- W. Kaufmann
The Unbearable Lightness of Being-- Milan Kundera
Nauses-- Jean Paul Sartre
Being and Nothingness-- Jean Paul Sartre
I and Thou—Martin Heidegger