selfmean
Philosophy cannot solve every problem in life. But it offers us something vital: reflection and doubt. To admit our own incompleteness and to rigorously examine our own beliefs—this is the true usefulness of philosophy.
selfmean
This is why we have another, surprisingly powerful option: to give meaning to our own lives. If there is no fixed meaning handed to us, we can create one. We can assign meaning to our work, our emotions, and even the smallest actions of our day.
selfmean
Yet, even with all that complex calculation, there is one standard we must never lose: being true to yourself. You cannot set a direction if you do not know who you are, nor can you fully commit to a path that fits you if you don't recognize what that path is.
![[7] How Should I Live—and What Should I Do?](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8c/73/8c730e7f-ab2f-44fd-8eb0-508372248311/content/images/size/w600/2026/02/ChatGPT-Image-2026----2----19-----------05_49_20-1.png)
selfmean
“How should I live?” Once you grow up and find yourself thrown into the world, this question arrives like fate. And once you start worrying about how to live, you naturally end up asking who you are.
selfmean
That is why the question, “What is the world?” ultimately becomes another: “What does this world mean to me?” It is a process of searching for meaning while drawing my own map of the place I call home.
selfmean
Life often brings events that make no sense, and responsibilities arise even within relationships that seem unrelated to us. As we carry the weight of this life, a question naturally rises to the surface: Who am I, really?
selfmean
Philosophers are ambitious. They chase ideas that must hold true across time and space—past, present, and future. If an answer only works for me, it isn’t truth; it’s just an opinion.
selfmean
Philosophy is a systematic, logical architecture of thought. As an academic discipline, it asks the big questions: Why should we live morally? What is justice? What does it mean to be human? The unconventional ideas and dense debates found in Plato or Kant belong to that world.
selfmean
The questions kept multiplying. If I don't know who I am, how can I live as myself? If I can't live in a way that is truly mine, does my life have any meaning? Then what does it mean to be "myself"? What does it mean to live? And what does it mean to live meaningfully?
selfmean
From a young age, there was always a certain emptiness wrapped around me. Something unnamed, circling me like rings around a planet. A strangeness about myself I could never quite put into words, and an awareness of that strangeness that never left me.