THE TRUTH ABOUT MATURITY

While I was reading Descartes Metaphysical Meditations 1 and 2, the first thing that came to my mind was the relation of his first paragraphs with one of the stages of life, usually puberty, when one starts to question everything about it.  The followng phrase made me remember that moment in life when one becomes an actual skeptic:

“Several years have now elapsed since I first became aware that I had accepted, even for my youth, many false opinions for true (…) and from that time I was convinced of the necessity of undertaking once in my life to rid myself of all the opinions I had adopted…” – Descartes

When we are young we are taught everything, from grabing a spoon to defending an opinion. While we are in this stage, following directions from others, we feel safe because we believe that we are in the same team. But the actual challenge relays in the next step: realizing that we are alone and that nobody knows the actual truth.

“For those old and customary opinions perpetually recur—long and familiar usage giving them the right of occupying my mind. Even almost against my will, and subduing my belief; nor will I lose the habit of deferring to them and confiding in them so long as I shall consider them to be what in truth they are, opinions to some extent doubtful…” - Descartes

When we are facing semi-darkness circumstances, we begin to emancipate ourselves from others and even from ourselves; be became mature. Questioning everything that they tell us is the first step to becoming free. At first, one usually experiments the feeling of despair, hopelessness, loneliness and anxiety, and by feeling this way a person wants to go back to their earlier life that seemed so perfect because they believe that they had neither trouble nor responsibility! (In Latin this is called Ubi Sunt… don’t ask why I know this) But… it is a little too late…! After we reached this point of internal reflexion, there is no turning back, and once again, by knowing this it makes us again despair!

“The Meditation of yesterday has filled my mind with so many doubts, that it is no longer in my power to forget them.” - Descartes

On the other hand, positive things come out of all of these negative sensations. We begging to think for our own and we became in true possession of our lives. Thus, “With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility”! Sartre at this point would sustain that freedom is a gift and a curse because as free beings we are responsible for ourselves, our consciousness and actions; and as a result, we are alone facing the responsibility of our own freedom.

Coming back to Descartes, I found interesting the fact that he tries to leave everything he thinks he knows behind, and he finds out that he knows nothing! All that he used to profess came from someone else’s impositions, and he was brave enough to doubt about EVERYTHING including his own existence!

In this point, I would like to point out that such position of doubting about everything may look a little bit extreme, but in my personal opinion, I believe that it was enriching because he was able to become free, even if at one turning point he might have felt scared about it.

As a result, he is brave enough to abandon all of his early thoughts, to start to rebuild his own thoughts and tries to prove them (even if I don’t agree in his way of using his “cogito”, because by his method everything could be proved) by his personal thinking, his personal cogito!

After all of my analysis, I would like to invite you to emancipate yourself from what others made you believe.