Why Do I Live?

I passed her by chance and did not know her... Her fresh face had grown pale and withered... her tender body had wasted away and grown thin... her radiant countenance had shrunken and dimmed... so that she seemed to be in the last stages of life when she had barely crossed its first. I asked her what was the matter, and she began to say:

This life, young as my acquaintance with it is, has wearied me and I have wearied it... it has grown weary of me and I of it... yet each of us still grips the other with force and violence, clinging to the other cruelly and without eagerness, cleaving to it in stubbornness and without desire... I do not throw out these words at random, nor do I utter them from spite or caprice; I mean every word of them... And you ask about the cause that has driven me to this dreadful pessimism, which has made of me an aged woman in the prime of life and the flower of youth... It is this: for as long as I have lived, through all the years of my life, many or few, that I have crossed, I have been forever laboring in search of an answer to a question that possessed me when I was small, and took hold of my thought and mind when I was grown; it exhausted my imagination and drove me down to watering places I could well have spared myself from seeking... The more I thought of it, the more it fled from me; and the more I pressed the pursuit, the farther it withdrew... That question is: Why do I live? What is the cause of my existence, and of the existence of every living being on this earth?...

I put this question of mine, when I was a crawling child, to my mother, and she was astonished that a girl like me should produce such a question — yet she quickly answered me, saying: You were placed on this earth, my daughter, first to worship God, and then to learn and be educated... And I asked her eagerly: And who is God, mother, that I should exist on this earth merely to worship him?... My mother knit her brows and pressed her fingers over my mouth, signaling me to be silent and not to blaspheme by uttering such questions — for God sees me and hears me wherever I am and wherever I turn, and He will call me to account for my deeds and for what my hands have wrought...

After that I began to picture God as a human being, but one of the giants, with two very wide eyes and two large ears, seeing and hearing everything you do... And I would imagine him at night, in the pitch darkness, with his gleaming eyes scattered as glittering stars across the reaches of the sky, watching me through the window; and I would shut my eyes in terror, throw my cover over my head, and surrender to sleep — only to find him looming in my dreams, now rebuking me for some ugly deed I had done, now praising another, glorious one, that my hands had offered... Then I outgrew childhood, and the meaning of the word God changed for me... I saw that it is folly and ingratitude to believe that our existence in this world is for nothing but the worship of the Creator... He has no need of us; He does not want us as slaves who spend their lives in prostration... though it is indeed our duty to thank Him for His gifts and His blessings and to sing His praise always... But my eternal question soon came back to me, insisting that the answer be found... And I went off in my turn, searching for an answer that would convince and satisfy... And they said: We were placed in this world to carry out a mission. I said: And what is that mission? Some of them

said: the continuation of the race; and some said: the passing on of the present culture to the coming generation; and some said: the spreading of God's religion upon the earth... and some said: the doing of one's duty... and they said and they said... And I said to them: Nonsense... This mission, however great and lofty and exalted its worth, is still no more than a mission, and we no more than messengers; the important thing, then, is the mission, and we become thereby a means for its performance. So are we human beings a means, or an end glorious in ourselves??...

And if we are an end, what is this end?? And they said: We were made to be happy... I said: And what is happiness?... And one of them said: Happiness is to carry out the mission for which God created you. I said: Are we circling around ourselves and deceiving ourselves? Since when does the end exist for the sake of the means?...

And another said: Happiness is in the acquiring of wealth. I said: And what is wealth? Is it not a means to the comfort of the body... and is happiness in the comfort of this body?...

And they said: True happiness is in the cultivation of the spirit, and in searching always for all that is true and good and beautiful... And I believed what they said... and I set about cultivating myself... I surrounded myself with every means that might raise a human being above worldly pettiness and lift her to a lofty world that acknowledges no material things and gives no weight to trifles... For this I enlisted an army of works of thought, and mustered a host of valuable intellectual studies — and I came out of it all perplexed, anxious, and troubled, as I had begun... I came to live in one world, while those about me lived in another... I avoided listening, and my soul turned away from the company of people, for they live in one valley and I wander in another... I came to see things in a way plainly different from the way people see them... And people avoided me in their turn, for they began to see in me a strange girl, kneaded of a clay other than their clay... And I became solitary, anxious... perplexed... visited from time to time by an insistent question... "Why do I live?"

And my companion fell silent... and I pitied her... She had lost her way...