One of the most profound revelations I had happened when I tutored a student. She was studying philosophy and asked me a question about the philosopher Descartes.
“Our professor told us to write about Descartes,” she said. “But I don’t know what Descartes means by unicorns and inanimate objects not being real.”
I chuckled. I’m not familiar with philosophy courses at all. I’ve never taken philosophy at a post-secondary level, so whenever I hear theorists’ names, my head starts to spin.
The student then opened her PowerPoint slides about Descartes. I read a few of his quotes about mind-body dualism. They felt extremely existential; Descartes spent his time questioning human existence. And sometimes I had the same questions.
While scrolling through the slides, one of the Descartes quotes stood out to me.
“If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life, you doubt, as far as possible, all things.”
I stopped for a second and looked at the student.
“Do you know what this means?” I asked her while pointing to the quote.
The student shook her head.
I grabbed a piece of paper and began drawing on it, showing the student how I interpreted the quote. I drew a cube and marked all of its sides.
“When you see this cube, you look at it from a one-sided perspective,” I told her. “You look at the front, and you believe that the front is all that there is.”
She nodded.
“But because you can only see the front, you don’t know what’s on the back, sides, top, or bottom of the cube,” I explained. “You may think the front is the only perspective because it’s all that you can see, but the cube has other sides too. And those sides may show the cube from a perspective that you can’t see from the front.”
The student’s eyes widened. “Wow, that makes sense,” she commented.
“This cube concept can also apply to life,” I told the student.
I then explained how we tend to believe that what is around us just is. We think of our classmates as our classmates, we think of our best friends as our friends, and we think of our school as an institution where we all study and submit assignments. But when we look at life through a singular perspective, we miss important details. Furthermore, we believe that everything we see is the result of an utopia, and in order to survive, we have to follow certain conventions.
But what would happen if we set aside all of those norms? What would our world be like?
As a society, we’re constantly bombarded with images of wealth and success. Celebrities fill our social media feeds. Our friends talk about buying new cars and owning their first homes.
But what’s the point of only focusing on tangible things like money?
As human beings, we are conditioned to chase money. We work just to stay financially secure and pay bills. But sometimes money is all we can see, so we forget about the other sides of the cube.
What would we be like if none of our material possessions mattered?
How would we change as people? How would society change? Would life still feel like a rat race that we need to win at any cost?
We don’t learn about the other sides of the cube until we lose our material possessions. When we don’t have much — at least by society’s standards — we’re more grateful for who we are and what we contribute to the world.
My thoughts drifted back to the student I tutored. At the end of the session, she expressed her gratitude.
“Thank you for explaining this to me,” she said, a huge smile on her face.
I nodded back at her. “No problem.”
“You know,” she said, “a difficult situation led me to come here. And I met you. The situation was a blessing in disguise.”
I nodded. “Don’t ever think of difficult situations as just difficult situations. Perhaps they weren’t hard situations in the first place. That’s what Descartes is trying to tell us.”
Featured Photo by Caroline Veronez on Unsplash.
