Isn’t it great that we have a new hobby – the meaning of existential? Marc’s observations are a true experience; when we hear folks use the word, we tend to feel they really don’t have a substantive argument. Marc is wise beyond his years (He has many).

Mariner promises this is the last post about existential.

Just to warm up the reader’s egotistical, self-centered brain, what you have warmed up has nothing to do with existentialism. To use another awkward analogy, existentialism in its correct, philosophical perspective, is not who you think you are.- that is not what’s important. Who you think you are is a result of interacting with reality.

Many years ago an individual, unnamed at the time, described his philosophy of life as an effort to experience as many different sensations, emotions, circumstances and social engagements as he possibly could because, he said, “I am what I experience”. He believed in the philosophy of existentialism.

Given Schroeder’s cat in a box, the cat is not real until you otherwise experience it.  What makes it real is a context provided by reality, not one’s egotistical, self-promoting ego – the reader didn’t know until reality presented it to them. A valid existential moment. One has the realization that until reality interacted with you, you could not add the experience.

Philosophically, those who believe the existential experience is what gives meaning and purpose to one’s life, believe reality is what defines us and shapes us. Our own definitions of ourselves are a way of interpreting that existential moment.

So, now that this wonderful, abstract word is not just part of your vocabulary but also an existential experience – and a hobby, mariner leaves the reader to enjoy a newly defined sense of self.

Ancient Mariner