Are your lives beautiful? Mine is. Perhaps yours is, too, along with those of your friends, grandparents, and even your boss at work. This is what I came to realize while reading Knulp.
The book consists of three main stories centered on Knulp: the first introduces the man himself, the second allows us to glimpse his worldview, and the final story follows his discovery of the meaning of his life. Drawing on Knulp's philosophy of life, I would now like to tell my own story.
Knulp is a free wanderer. With no fixed profession, he travels everywhere, living on the hospitality of others. He is handsome, talented, and fond of contemplation. He enjoys philosophical conversations with friends and takes pleasure in life's unhurried moments. His life can appear to be a lifetime of wandering without any particular purpose. Such an attitude might also seem irresponsible, since he bears so few obligations. Yet this is not entirely fair. He seems to understand life's finitude and beauty: that life is beautiful because it ends, and that we should therefore enjoy it sincerely.
Imagine a dazzling fireworks display. When we first light the fuse, we do not expect the sparks to burn forever. Fireworks vanish in the blink of an eye. That is why watching them sometimes fills me with a strange sense of emptiness. Why light the fuse, stand at a distance waiting, and crane our necks to look upward if the flames will disappear so quickly? There is something uncanny about us watching those sparks fade almost as soon as they appear. Nevertheless, fireworks are beautiful. Not merely because the bright sparks look pretty for a fleeting instant, but because the display itself is finite. The sparks do not last; everything unfolds in a moment. That is precisely why fireworks are so beautiful. Would they be just as lovely if the sparks stayed frozen in place after the explosion? No. Because they disappear so quickly, we savor their brief existence more deeply.
Paradoxical as it sounds, this is true. This morning I was delighted by the sunlight falling on the dining hall, perhaps because I already knew that the scene could not last forever. When snow fell unexpectedly in mid-March, I found it strange but also genuinely joyful, knowing that my days of seeing my school covered in white were limited. Whenever I encounter such small, certain pleasures, I try to focus on every sensation I experience: the sounds I hear, the scents around me, and the things before my eyes. I try to make that moment wholly mine. Sometimes it breaks my heart to know that it will eventually pass. Yet that very knowledge allows me to enjoy it with all my strength.
Perhaps finitude is an essential element of beauty. Or perhaps everything finite is beautiful. Human lives are short, life itself is finite, and everything within it is finite. From a cosmic perspective, a human life may be shorter than a fireworks display. To us, the people living those lives, they may seem impossibly long; in reality, they are astonishingly brief. That is why human life is beautiful. That is why everything we encounter is beautiful. I truly mean everything: the face of a friend who always makes me angry, an accident that cracks a bone, even a terrible hotel breakfast. We cannot revisit a moment we have already passed through. We cannot return to that exact place in time or reproduce precisely the feelings and thoughts we had there. Whenever I think about this, my heart aches. My seventeenth year has already passed, and soon my eighteenth will pass as well. Time moves so quickly. That is why I try to experience every moment of life as it is. I accept and feel my emotions, sensations, and thoughts without trying to alter them. In those moments I feel alive. I focus on the fact that my life is finite and recognize that I will never be able to live this precise reality again. The joy and strange emptiness that follow sometimes help me live more meaningfully.
There is a saying, attributed here to the astronomer Carl Sagan, that things are beautiful because they are finite. After reading Knulp, I was struck anew by its extraordinary insight. It seemed to speak to the lives of all humanity. Perhaps I am still too young to grasp its full meaning. Yet I think I understand that we ought to be grateful for every part of our lives, and that we should live each day with gratitude. Carpe diem. What matters is not the overwhelming emptiness that might come from knowing my life will end, but what I feel here, in this very moment. To be frank, I do not know whether I could say the same thing at the lowest point of my life. Perhaps these are ridiculous words from a child who knows almost nothing. Still, this is the attitude I want to strive toward. I want to know how to savor life and how to enjoy it. I simply want to become that kind of person.