A wise man named Lord Byron once said, "The great art of life is sensation, to feel that we exist, even in pain." This quote is short yet has a deep meaning and can be interpreted in many different ways. I will share what I think it means and I would love to hear what you think it means in the comments and whether you agree with me or not.
I want to breakdown this quote into two parts. With that being said, the first part I will be covering is "the great art of life is sensation". Life is beautiful; it can be compared to art. I believe having choices is a key foundation in life. It's about the decisions we make to do whatever we want and to justify our existence. In essence, this can be translated to art and how someone can draw or paint what they want.
So where does sensation fit into the picture? Based on my interpretation, I believe sensation is about feeling life or aka feeling the choices that we made by drawing on the canvas I mentioned earlier. From the art, most people can feel the meaning and story behind it; the artist pours some sort of emotion into it. To better describe how this translates to real life, I will use myself as an example. I have decided to play pickleball tomorrow. In the end, it's just a sport that gets a lot of love and hate. Besides that point, I go there more than just to play the sport but to get that feeling of adrenaline when I win those 6-15 points rallies. I go there to exercise and try to life my life and have a bit of socializing. I go there for the experience because I'm having fun when I'm playing the sport. In other words, the sensation from the quote is about experiencing life (experiencing those decisions that we have made)
This is where part two comes in "to feel that we exist, even in pain." This part of the quote cuts a little bit deeper. Earlier, I mentioned about justifying our life. I feel as a human that it's very normal to want to have validation in life. We want to be accepted, valued and understood by others or even by ourselves. This type of validation can be external or internal. It's a psychological thing and has been proven true to a certain degree.
Anyways moving on to me, I want to enjoy my life and do the things I want. That's a part of the existing for me but these are just the small things. To feel that I exist, I have to do something greater. That's why for the next weekend, I have chosen to volunteer and help a charity food bonanza event supporting old folks and orphans. This is not something I will do once. Over time, I will definitely participate in more charity events. This isn't just about charity but it could be also starting my own business and making a name for myself. There's just so much things to do and experience in life that I don't think anybody can do it in one lifetime.
Now you may be wondering, where does pain fit in the picture. Well as great as life can be, there are times where things aren't good. Everyone will have their moments of suffering and for some it may be worse than others. For example, everyone will lose a loved one. Some people go through depression and they will experience the lowest of lows of life like going homeless. In these low times, we still want to feel we exist. Deep down we want someone there to know we are in pain and to be there for us hence why some people do crazy things like trying to jump off a 50 story building to get attention or live stream their potential suicide etc.
All in all, the quote can best be summarized as "Let's experience everything we can with the limited time we have whether it be good or bad".