What defines you?

This is a fun question to consider: if I were a word, what would my definition be? If my life were a word, what would it mean?

Well, I think a good answer to this question is given by the name under which I write, a name that I chose for myself - Insinq, which is an abbreviation of what I consider my True Name to be, Insightful Inquiry.

What this means is that I am as curious as curious can be, and that I am dedicated to the contemplative life of meditation on the nature of existence. In other words, I talk, think and breathe philosophy, and I am by far the most philosophically obsessed individual I’ve ever met. My entire life is guided by it, and it informs everything I think about the world. Consequently it should be no surprise that the meaning of my life is construed in explicitly philosophical terms, summarized in a word as Entelechy.

I live and die for the transformative development of the potential which is manifest within me, and the opportunity such an ability affords me in the act of reflection, which I mean here in two distinct senses at once, is far too precious to pass up.

First, there is the common-place conceptualisation of reflection as a process of introspective analysis - in my effort to overcome who I am in order to become who I might be, I must make use of my capacity to reflect upon myself at varying levels of abstraction.

This component of reflection is the practical aspect; without the act of introspective analysis to which we metaphorically refer as a ‘reflection’, we would be incapable of adaptation, or dynamic growth, which is imperative if we are to survive an unpredictable and apathetic natural environment such as our own.

The second meaning of reflection to which I refer is again metaphorical, but with a slightly more literal twist - here I mean my ability to reflect, just as a mirror might, the transcendent nature of reality within myself.

Reflection in this sense, then, is a more passive mirroring of what truly is, rather than an active pondering of what ‘I’ truly is. This kind of reflection involves the former type in an instrumental capacity, however it is focused upon understanding the True nature of reality and aligning oneself with that understanding. An individual who is attempting to align themselves with the Truth of existence is thus engaging in the epitome of entelechy - Reflection.

Not only does one so described critically consider their personal perspective and contextualise it within the properly defined boundaries of Truth, but so too do they, in their thoughts and behaviours, manifest the transcendence of that Truth within themselves by reflecting reality within an embodied existential orientation which is in complete concordance with coherence itself - a heavenly harmony if ever I’ve heard one.

In summary, I personally live for the realisation of potential - be that mine, yours, or that of existence itself. Whatever happens, must always happen, for things could be no other way except exactly as they are.

Such is life.

Of course, you might be wondering - okay, so the meaning of life is to realize your potential, but how do I decide what path to take? In other words, how does one know what potential they are destined to realize?

To this question, my answer is that this information is to be found in the progressive harmonization of the self with the entirety of Reality. This is the metric that I employ to assist in my identification of the moment that I have begun to stray from my path, and it is how I know that my goals for my life are worthwhile and justifiable for me. Why do I choose to be the person that I am trying to be? THAT is the question.

It is, I think, an extremely important question, because billions of people around the world and around the clock struggle with their identity and the direction of their existence. Rarely do we encounter someone who really seems to know where they are going, and rarer still is such an individual that can explain to you how they know in a way that enables you to make some progress yourself.

For me personally, I find that the goals I have for my life are based on both the skills that I have acquired/the functional field of possibilities that is open to me as a consequence of my ability as well as on the understanding that I have developed quite extensively over my 25 years of life regarding my role in the ‘grand scheme of things’, as it were.

That may sound a little ridiculous to most, and even more so if I tell you a bit about the way I think about the world - I am an atheistic, naturalistic rationalist-reductionist who believes in the scientific method tempered by the dialectic. You would be right to challenge me, given my above positions, on what exactly I could mean by ‘my role in the grand scheme of things’, given that, presumably, I don’t think there is a ‘grand scheme’ according to which events unfold. This follows, of course, from my statement about being an atheist primarily - given that I don’t believe in a grand schemer of any kind - which is true, there is no ‘plan’ for existence in my opinion - it seems logical that thus I would not naturally have any such precisely defined role awaiting my attention, instead being forced to make it up for myself and to deal with the consequences of such a paradigm.

In truth however, I think that both answers are true in a sense - my deterministic role in existence is to decide for myself what my role is, according to the information which is available to me and using the hardware I was born with. There is indeed no ‘grand scheme’ according to any ‘grand schemer’, but nonetheless there is a way things are and a way they have to be, which we can describe to some extent using our models of physics, chemistry and biology. The world around me and indeed myself within are governed by Natural Law, and despite the fact that I may not know what the rules are, I am nonetheless their manifest conclusion, driven by their every directive yet ignorantly thinking of this ego as my own self.

Despite the lack of divine purpose and even in lieu of actual agency, my transcendental purpose remains clear to me - I am alive in order that I might realize my developmental potentiality through the processes of Reflection that I mentioned earlier.

In short, as far as I understand what defines me, it is as follows: Reality is a certain way and so am I - there is a transcendental order which governs existence and if I can figure out how to articulate that order, then I too can be guided and governed by its absolute truth - insofar as I adequately understand it, anyway. If I can manage that, then I should be ideally positioned to get whatever it is that I want out of my life, and not only that, but I should also be able to get a pretty clear picture of what that actually might be.

In order to figure this puzzle out for yourself, all that is required is for you to seek to locate yourself among the divine clockwork of existence, as both single cog and entire machine at once. The world has a fractal order which is distributed equally everywhere, and it acts through you. All you have to do is allow it to do so.

In conclusion, then, what I recommend is that you open yourself up to receive from your world the information you need in order to decipher your place in the 'grand scheme' of things. It is written equally on your heart and all around you. All that remains for you to do is simply to look around, and to see.

Your relationship with your world will define you - if you allow it to.

Good luck.