The White Noise: Why We Do What We Do

“Suddenly, a mist fell from my eyes and I knew the way that I had to take.”
-Edvard grieg

I, as I assume many others my age on their way out of their fleeting childhood, yet on their way in to the search for meaning of why we are here or why we do what we do, constantly find myself wrestling with the concept of death and our own mortality. I find myself wondering “what’s the point?” or “If we avoid extinction on earth, the sun will swallow us whole anyway, eventually making all human advancement ultimately pointless in the grand scope of existence”. It comes off as depression, or it comes off as a bit nihilistic, but I have taken a different approach to the subject as I find myself slowly finding what the purpose of my life, and life in general, is. This approach is how I’ve managed to find solace in the seemingly inherent futility of existence, which may not be all that inevitable in the end.

I believe that this is the natural state of mind for a human being before it finds its purpose; that humans are naturally drawn to negative thoughts and emotions, and the true primal purpose of our life lies within purpose itself. Purpose, however, to me, has a very different meaning than it does to most I know, because I fail to find a better word for it. Think of the spirit, soul, conscience, however you want to call it, as a radio that can only tune into one station. When we are not tuned to that channel, all we hear is static, white noise. This white noise is all of those negative thoughts and fears and doubts that fill the empty space in our minds not dedicated to passion. Those fears of what happens after we die, those doubts surrounding if anything we do is truly worth it, or those negative thoughts that we will never succeed, those are all this white noise. However, as we tune closer and closer to that one station, the signal becomes more apparent, maybe only subtle and faint in the beginning. The closer we get to finding the frequency of that one station, the less white noise we hear as we tune that knob, and the more clearly we can hear the music of that one station we search for. This one station, is our purpose, and it plays the clearest, most pure music that we will ever know. A music that some may find the frequency for overnight, and others sadly, spend their whole lives looking for, only to never find it in the end. However, if you are one of the lucky ones that finds your station, you will, without a doubt, never go a day without listening to it again.

This purpose is what drives us as human beings ever forward into the jaws of the unknown. Beethoven did not write his Moonlight Sonata because he was told “if you write this, you will become Beethoven”. Thoreau did not write Walden because he was told “if you write this, you will become Thoreau”. The Wright Brothers did not invent the miracle of human flight because they were told “if you do this, you will become the Wright Brothers”. Alexander Fleming didn’t slave over his studies for years to discover penicillin just because he was told “if you work for this, you will become Alexander Fleming”. These were people, just like you and I, who simply followed their purpose, their job in this life that truly gripped them and absorbed them into a feeling of bliss and euphoric cacophony to drown out the white noise which screamed “there’s no point.” No, they were simple men who only did what gave them peace of mind in this world, who are all proof that so long as you follow your purpose with zeal and fanatic dedication, you will find truth and success, or at least, contentment. In Edvard Grieg’s words yet again:

“To have the ability to withdraw into oneself and forget everything around one when one is creating - What, I think is the only requirement to for being able to bring forth something beautiful. The whole thing is - a mystery”.

Or in the words of the venerable Martin Luther King Jr., ”If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as a Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, ‘Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well. … [for] No work is insignificant. All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.”

Before Martin Luther King marched for freedom, he was just another man. Before Beethoven revolutionized the symphony, he was just another man. Before Thoreau wrote Walden… the point has been rightfully beaten to death by now, but the emphasis has hopefully been placed on how easy it is to go from a regular man or woman on the streets struggling for importance to a historical icon of human ingenuity simply by following your heart to what makes you feel human and complete, which in and of itself is the true essence of why one must find purpose. It was only because these people found their purpose and dedicated their lives to it with stubborn reckless abandon that we were given the miracle of x-ray, or flight, or the radio, or the printing press.

To this end, if we humans continue to follow our purpose with religious zeal as we do now and as we always have, we never know where we may end up, but we know it will be forward. Think of all the things thought impossible, or diving, or of the arcane only a hundred years ago. Imagine talking with your friend across the ocean in Madrid while you’re in Philadelphia in real time FaceTime and checking the news of an event that just happened four minutes ago in Beijing all while microwaving your instant dinner in the year 1889. Imagine simply not dying of an infection in the year 1927. The point is, that we have no idea what we’re capable of in the future while living in the present moment. The fact is, we are either a fleeting earthbound race at the end of their rope at the hands of climate change or mutually assured destruction, or an interstellar species at only the dawn of their existence just now learning how to evade all forms of extinction and how to travel through space to other habitable planets. The only thing that separates us between these two realities is how well we as a species can put our heads down, find our purpose, and work until our job is done.

This is not to imply, of course, that our existence rests solely in the hands of the scientists, engineers, and doctors. For all of its importance for us to press ever onward into our hazed future, what good is perpetuity and eternity if there is nothing to eternally exist for? The scientists, doctors, and engineers work so that we may continue to have writers, musicians, and artists. The beloved excerpt from the Dead Poets’ Society contains several musings pertinent to the subject at hand, yet one resonates stronger in me than the rest:

“We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman, "O me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless... of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?" Answer. That you are here - that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. That the powerful play *goes on* and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?”

We all contribute to this tapestry of human existence no matter how small our contribution is. At one point or another, or at least I hope, one of us has shown one other person that there is something worth living for. Within that web of 8 billion people all showing each other just once in their lives that this life is worth living, we are cultivating a world of motivation to keep this flame burning. The scientists keep the authors alive, and the authors give the scientists reason to want to stay alive. The engineers work for ways to avoid tragedy, so that the musicians may continue to play, giving reason for the engineer to want to avoid tragedy. This positive feedback loop of people dedicating themselves to their purpose so they may experience the purpose of others is a magical human experience that happens to also be the only chance we have that one day our species may soar among the stars and experience true eternity in the human spirit.

And this is why we do what we do. This is why I spend hours a day learning Scandinavian languages, or compositional skills, or devouring musicology and history books, why I dedicate so much time to exploring new musics and literature, why I play music, or why I may sit for hours beside a river just listening to what it has to say, because though I don’t know right now what the fruits of these labors will be, I do them simply because I know that is the right thing for me to do, and that it is my verse that I must contribute to this great play we are all a part of. I do it because for these moments or hours when I am pouring every ounce of my being into this work and research, I forget everything that tries to drag me into the abyss. I forget that I am mortal. I forget that I will probably be forgotten. I forget that no one will ever care about what I do. I forget everything, and simply “do”. If for no other reason, this is why we do what we do, because it is the only thing that keeps us from the white noise, and the only thing that keeps us moving forward into a bright future we can all believe in regardless of how dark things may seem.