Dear Reader,
As I typed out the title of this post, I can’t help but wonder about the true meaning of “Looking for Alaska” (the book is beautiful! 5/5).
Throughout the book, “the labyrinth” maintained its position as the central theme of everything. As the Old Man asked, “How would you personally get out of this labyrinth of suffering?”
The answer that the book gave was (spoiler!) to forgive
But I do believe that I have a different answer to the question. I had always believed that religions are our attempts to answer things that science cannot. But maybe, religions are also the promise to the people that there’s an exit to the labyrinth; Buddhism says that the exit is to have no desire nor expectations; Islam promises the exit to be the allegiance to the one true God; Christianity insists the exit be the cause for hope and redemption.
I think that the way out of the labyrinth is to enjoy the labyrinth itself, to accept the fact that the suffering exists to emphasize the existence of happiness. I personally don’t think that a place where there’s no suffering doesn’t exist, because without the ugly there’s no beautiful, and without suffering there’s no happiness, or non-suffering, however you want to call it; in my opinion, happiness doesn’t seem to be the right word to name non-suffering. Because as my answer to the question remarks, to “get out” of the labyrinth, happiness is being merged with the labyrinth itself.
Labyrinth is not just suffering, it’s life. And life compromises of everything, sourness, sweetness, bitterness. To enjoy the labyrinth is to enjoy life.
I’m not saying that to exit is to ignore the labyrinth, but I’m insisting that to exit, one needs to accept oneself and all the suffering and all the wonderful and interesting things that the world has to offer.
I’m having trouble wrapping this up, guess I will follow John Green and use last words here,
“It has all been most interesting.”
— Mary Wortley Montagu
Thank you for reading.