When I first became familiar with existential thinking as an undergraduate, it was a revelation to me. Thinking about what life meant and how we made meaning in our lives was already something I thought a lot about. Studying the Romantic poets in senior high school opened me up to a broader conversation about existence and whether there was something beyond the material. I confess that part of me has been fascinated with religious thought since an early age, while another part of me scoffed at all this as I learned about science and the rational world. It is a dichotomy that has never been bridged.

The idea that we are born with no a priori purpose is strangely liberating. When I first dug into the pages of Esslin's Theatre of the Absurd, read the plays of Ionesco, Beckett and Albi, and attended the wonderful lectures of Dr. Jean Wilhelm in World Drama 1, some bright thing hove into view. It has stayed with me since, informing at least some of the work I did as a drama teacher and remaining a touchstone to this day. In terms of the arts, absurdism (which is one possible conclusion of existentialism) has the potential to unsettle a baked-in worldview and challenge long-held beliefs. There is nothing wrong with testing these waters, for stoking doubt surely gives us conditions for further growth if we are open to it.

Truth is, I keep running into stuff that harks back to my earlier epiphany. I haven't lost that first sense of wonder that there were real people thinking great things beyond my middle-class existence, things that went way beyond mundane concerns and the wretched mediocrity of television. What that says about me I don't know except that I feel compelled by a curiosity that I cannot explain.