Reading Response #8

I have to admit that I felt a bit melancholic flipping through the last pages of the book – it is perhaps one of the comic books that provoked the most thoughts in me.

I want to focus my discussion on Principle 8.17: We design as an act of play.

Personally, I think having music early in my life actually resulted in me pondering on philosophical questions later than some of my peers – for the first 22 years of my life I was barely bothered by the question of purpose and existence. (My mom said that was because I spent a good amount of my time reading scores instead of reading books – oof! She also “flexed” saying that she started wondering about similar questions back in high school hahaha)

I wasn't interested in humanity until last year, when a friend of mine got too bothered with this question and we went through a few lengthy debates. Through the course of the debates I came to a few conclusions:

1. Up until then, I tried to understand the world through the science lens and believed that everything could be explained by science, thus paying very little attention to understanding humanity and emotions beyond biological and psychological explanations.



2. As a result, our existence has no purpose other than passing on our DNA.
3. And so, I don’t need to be bothered wondering what’s the purpose of my existence. Instead, as long as I am having fun on earth (or perhaps outside of earth someday), I should be happy, because I came with no other purpose I must fulfill.

I liked these conclusions mostly. It also made me realize that part of the reason these questions didn’t come to me earlier was because I considered myself mostly having fun with what I studied and what I did, without thinking too much about what they could bring me in the future. (which will probably become a headache when it comes to finding a job)

But shortly after that I reflected on (1) because I found myself going through some emotional turmoil that went beyond my understanding. I started to rethink the purpose of human emotions – perhaps a quicker way to understand our emotions is to just feel them, and then accept them. We developed more complex emotions to connect more efficiently with other humans, and it would defeat its purpose trying to explain it from bottom-up every time.

I also like the fact that we have no purpose (2). As metioned in class on Thursday, "to be born without a purpose is to be truly free". This concept makes life "playable" and attractive to me.

Also, I think (3) aligns with Principle 8.17 – we do things in our life for fun. I realized that whenever I tried to have fun with my pieces, composing came naturally, but when I put myself under the pressure to write the next contemporary masterpiece, I would likely struggle for hours for nothing. My first composition that I wrote in high school – Rain on the Road – was indeed a result of “pausing for small good things” (Principle 8.23) (8.23 is my birthday! Wow!). I was amazed by how the streetlights got blurred by raindrops on the car window and looked like dandelions as a result. I took a photo of the beautiful scene and wrote down the main ideas for the piece that night in my room while looking at the photo.

This composition later won a small award, which encouraged me to major in composition in college :)

I am thankful for having to reflect every week to reading Artful Design, which reminded me of many fun moments like composing Rain on the Road that made an impact in designing my purpose.