Ancient Philosophers, The Theory of Everything, and Finding the Silver Lining

Tragedy is a part of life. Miracles are too. You love, you mourn, you live, and you die. It happens. Many times I have wondered what the purpose of it all is. The question is always "WHY?" Why do "bad" things happen to "good" people, and why do "good" things happen to "bad" people? Why do we experience what we experience, and why are we even living life? These are some of the most elusive questions, philosophers for millennia have struggled to answer them, and nobody is any more right than anyone else. I may not be qualified to answer these questions, but then again, who is? I think the answer to these profound questions point us towards the silver lining that we long to see in every tough experience. It points us towards hope and opportunity when they are nowhere to be found.


For years, believe it or not, I have sat and paced for hours, trying to answer questions that even the so-called geniuses have had a hard time answering. Every time I thought, I found a paradox, and that paradox led to another one, I was running in circles, no matter how hard I tried to run in a straight line. Every time, after exhausting my mind, I came to the conclusion that I wasn't fit to answer such questions, and it seems that I wasn't the only one. I read philosophical texts, everything from the greeks, and eastern world, to 20th century philosophy, the answers changed. A pattern occured, though. That pattern is that the answers changed in theme and specificity over time. The more we knew, the deeper we went with our answers, and counter-intuitively, the more questions we found. It seems that the more we knew, the more we didn't know. This showed me something: It showed me that most likely nobody has found the complete truth. Maybe we have touched it, but nobody has grasped it. I always believed that because of the complexity of the questions, the more complex the answer the more inaccurate it probably was. If everything physical can be broken down into simple, like-particles, why can't questions be broken down into simple answers? The problem is that this leads us to the search for the Theory of Everything; the most sought after theory in theoretical physics. It is a theory that unifies the small world and the big, the subjective and the objective. To have this theory is to have the answers. 


That theory is just a dream in present time, and as such, the best we can do is accept the fact that we don't have all of the answers. Acceptance is key. Accepting all possibilities is key to living life. Accepting life and death, accepting tragedies and miracles, accepting the existence in the good and the bad, is what leads us to be thankful. We are all human beings, with different struggles and different lives, but we all share the same home, and we all just want to be happy. Some of us face the worst of events, and although many choose denial over acceptance, if you cease to fight the bad in your life, the good will come. The Dalai Lama said " If there is no solution to the problem then don't waste time worrying about it. If there is a solution to the problem then don't waste time worrying about it." The key is to accept what you can't change and live with it, and fix what you can change. If you accept, then you don't worry, and there is no inner conflict, and if you fix, then there is positive change. The silver lining only exists if you choose to see it. It is within your power to experience the good in life, all you have to do is fix the fix-able, accept the un-fixable, and appreciate all that you have.



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