, Dec. 3, 2021 Introduction It has been consistently remarked among scholars – with almost total unanimity – that life in its most natural state is exceptionally deadly, difficult, complex, and engendering of feelings of misery. The default state, according to these thinkers, rather than being pleasure, joy, nor happiness, has always been despair and suffering. The Absurdist philosophy, pioneered by many great philosophers – including the French Albert Camus – has even developed under the guiding notion that life is always (and shall forever remain) meaningless. This struggle with the pains of life is inherent – and it therefore invariably grows and progresses until we finally begin to experience true woe, which in this instance adopt two forms: first of brokenness (in which life so severely destroys our fundamental selves that we fall into the chasm of despair) and second, of dissonance, in which the mind, crushed under the enormous weight of life’s great struggle, begins to fragment and crack. This work serves as a simultaneous discussion of these obstacles imposed on humanity by the cold hands of life herself – brokenness and dissonance - and as an examination of hope and community, the tools one might employ to pull themselves up from the pit of misery. To underscore and better examine these points, I shall relate them on a personal level to my experience as a new student at this prestigious university, and shall detail my own confrontations with dissonance, hope, and community. To provide a short thesis of sorts that shall be underlain through this paper, I would assert the following: when asked what I have encountered, I shall reply, brokenness. When asked how I have responded, I shall reply, community Brokenness and Dissonance I may not yet have encountered total brokenness (and I count myself as fortunate in this regard), but much as another first-year student came to experience the sharp blade of dissonance, feeling an unpleasant “disappointment” in the difference between her ideas of forging friendships and the harsh reality of loneliness with which she was presented, 1 I too have been forced to confront a reality which has frequently differed greatly from my expectation. Namely, I have been forced to confront what I have found to be the meaninglessness of my student life; I grapple with the meaning – or lack thereof – in my work and therefore the meaning of my existence in its current state This is the dissonance I have begun to experience. This unpleasant experience of dissonance is provoked by an overarching failure on my behalf to answer the question of why? Why do I choose every morning to attend classes – to go to school? Why do I choose to read, to write, to converse with others, to look at the world around me? Why do I choose to subject myself to those things which I personally find to be less-than enjoyable? Why, interesting as it may be, do I choose to write this Moreau Integration? What is the meaning behind all my work? Let me use, for example, my body of three essays produced for my political science class. Of those things I produce – my creations into which I incorporate my heart, soul, and mind – what purpose do they serve? They have no impact on other individuals or other objects. The completely fail to meaningfully affect anything really, nor to result in any significant outcome. Again, my Political Science essays: are they ever read without a critical eye, without the mind of an examiner seeking to identify flaws, produce a final grade, and quickly forget the work I have so caringly produced? The ability and desire to create is fundamental to humanity and serves as a differentiating line between us and other terrestrial species; it has been often speculated that we may best actualise ourselves in the process of creation. But I ask myself, is there any true meaning to my creation? What personal purpose might I find in this 1 “Advice From a Formerly Lonely College Student,” Emery Bergmann, Moreau FYE Week nine (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/09/well/family/advice-from-a-formerly-lonely-college-student.html) De Natura Vitae From Brokenness to Wholeness intimate action? Will my works ever truly serve someone, or something? My life at present follows a repetitive cycle of production without meaning, work without purpose, over, and over again. And it is in this cycle that I have found my dissonance. To briefly deviate from my personal anecdote, I should remark that others too have found brokenness and dissonance at one point another in their lives. My leadership, political science, and American Studies classes have all, at one point or another, made mention of individuals who have been forced to confront the harsh realities of life and who have languished as a result: those who have fought for political freedom and equality have suffered; those many families of African decent were (in the foundational years of American history) subject to slavery, extrajudicial death, and dehumanization, and accordingly suffered; those many leaders who sought change and improvement suffered. While my dissonance is of a more philosophical form and is concerned more with a meaning to life, it is still felt by many, many others around the planet. Consider the common trope of those who feel trapped in their lives, or detail their sufferings with such lines as, “I have nothing left to live for.” While my existential pain is, again, not of an exceedingly severe nature, I do too feel some degree of meaninglessness and dissonance. People from all walks of life have experienced brokenness and dissonance. Dissonance, which is defined in one sense as a lack of harmony, accordingly, creates a lack of harmony between us people that should otherwise exist. We fight and argue amongst one another because we have succumbed to the hardships of life – because we have experienced pain and, in foolhardy attempts to write these external wrongs, seek external answers when, really, external problems may be solved only through internal processes (community, a potential solution, may, for instance, be found only in “the recesses of the human heart” 2 ). Consider the lack of political harmony which we now experience, in which - having been pushed by the extreme stresses of modern life – we encounter “ongoing conflict” and “polarization,” 3 the process by which we draw further and further away from each other. Hope and Community Now to return to my own experience of dissonance and felt meaninglessness. As is often the nature of things, the hands of life present to use two options once we have finally become enveloped in brokenness or dissonance. We may either submit to this tragedy, once and for all – or we may choose to find some way to recover; to return from the journey of hardship and suffering as stronger than we were when we first began stumbling and tripping down that winding road. This, as the title to this work would suggest, is the Nature of Life. Two ways by which we may accomplish this mental and spiritual recovery have been outlined by the Moreau course: the first is hope, and while this is not what saved me from my feelings of meaninglessness, it does indeed appear for many as rope of salvation with which to climb from the abyss of brokenness and achieve the ‘wholeness’ cited in the title. Hope is indeed quite fundamental and essential to recovery from brokenness. Many individuals placed in the darkest of situations have been able to survive, and to live, because of their discovery of hope. Viktor Frankl, who managed to emerge from one of the darkest tunnels ever journeyed – the torture and pain in the Auschwitz concentration camp – said (many years after his liberation) that as long as he had hope for life, he simply could not allow himself to die. I personally see no argument of greater strength for the saving power of hope. Indeed, in my American Studies class, we quite closely studied the famous abolitionist Frederick Douglass, who would often speak on hope – hope of a better future, and of equality for all – often with the same vigour and emotions that Frankl would later employ. The Campus Ministry also talks in great length about the saving grace of hope; 4 they proclaim the impressive power of hope through a quote that “we must be men with hope to bring,” for it is by bringing hope to another that they may be saved from their despair. They very truly state that hope is a gift to humanity. The other way by which one might find deliverance from the suffering of brokenness and dissonance is in community – and it was through this avenue that I was able to find my own escape. I have found my meaning in the friends I have 2 “Thirteen Ways of Looking at Community?” Parker Palmer, Moreau FYE Week eleven (http://couragerenewal.org/parker/writings/13-ways-of-looking-at-community/) 3 “Should Catholic Schools Teach Critical Race Theory?” Christopher Devron, Moreau FYE Week ten (https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2021/06/03/critical-race-theory-catholic-high-schools-black-lives-matter-240792) 4 “Holy Cross and Christian Education?” The Campus Ministry, Moreau FYE Week twelve (PDF document; no citeable link). made, and the relationships I have worked to forge; and these friendships, this community, have certainly been the most pleasant “gift to receive.” 5 By devoting myself to others, I have found not only a meaning separate from my academic affairs – from which I may draw sustenance in times of difficulty – I have also found a group of people who sincerely enjoy my company, and with whom I may share the small joys of life. The feeling of support that I have found within my friends here at Notre Dame is absolutely invaluable and has served as the basis for the parting advice I delivered to my brother, who is now himself just beginning the college application process: “choose a school with a great community. It matters more than you know.” I have found strength and purpose in my friends and liken their presence to a hand that, when needed, curls around me like a closed fist until I am totally enveloped in a protective shield. And this is also the way by which may others find value and meaning. When moving to a new place, or experiencing brokenness, many turn to the support of their friends and to the very same form of community as that which has been described in our Moreau course. These are not the only paths by which one might walk towards the light, however. Again, using my personal feelings of meaningless, how have the most prominent among us humans attempted to inject find meaning into their lives? Potential resolutions have often taken the form of a desire to act in ways that fundamentally change the shape of the world. The giants of today construct empires of business and personal finance, finding their own meaning in the inventions they have created, the financial empires they have constructed, or the charitable causes they have championed. Military leaders of all sorts have conquered and fought, finding meaning in the protection of country and of the communities or groups they champion. They may find contentedness knowing that they have shaped the world and that their actions shall be remembered for all time in the historical record. Roman Emperors built roads stretching across Europe that still see use even today – some 3000 years later – or carved impressions of themselves into marble and stone. Latin, the language of those Emperors (and a significant lasting piece of their legacy) continues to be used today, mostly within scholarly works and for scholarly terms. In emphasis of this point, this very piece is titled under a Latin name meaning, in English, “On the Nature of Life.” I would be remiss, however, if I did not make mention of a certain caveat. As is somewhat poetically the case, community and hope both serve as saving solutions to the issue of brokenness – but when even slightly overused, they become dangerously poisonous to ourselves and others. When overly reliant on Community, for instance, this overuse may develop into any number of extremisms: cults – which may adopt various forms but always share a common thread of complete overbearing community – are one such example. An overly fierce dedication to a community that presents itself in the form of a nation may lead to feelings of supremacy, nationalism, and, indeed, open conflict. Similarly, an overreliance on hope may turn one into an unrealistic dreamer, ungrounded from reality. As is the case with many things, the wisest individuals are those able to achieve some sort of moderation. The Future In the future, I shall undoubtedly have to place great emphasis on building and maintaining strong friendships – for it is by way of these friendships that I have managed to find significant purpose, meaning, and contentedness. In the past, I have focused significantly on my work and have used my pursuits – academic and extracurricular alike – as the basis by which I have found purpose and enjoyment. Now, however, I have decided to diversify, and to include my new friends as a prominent source of these emotions. I thus would like to re-iterate the pseudo thesis statement I made earlier: when asked what I have encountered, I shall reply: brokenness. When asked how I have responded, I shall reply: community. My community is the result of progress I have made, and I shall continue to work to strengthen the links which bind me to my friends – while simultaneously searching out for new friends and new people to meet. If anything, community is a gift I “have been given from the beginning but [am] still learning how to receive.” 6 5 “Thirteen Ways of Looking at Community?” Parker Palmer, Moreau FYE Week eleven (http://couragerenewal.org/parker/writings/13-ways-of-looking-at-community/) 6 “Thirteen Ways of Looking at Community?” Parker Palmer, Moreau FYE Week eleven (http://couragerenewal.org/parker/writings/13-ways-of-looking-at-community/)