what’s the point? by Alan Z. '23, MEng '24

part 1: impact

One of my strongest core beliefs is that the answer to the question “what is the meaning of life?” is not “to change the world,” at least in the way that phrase is typically meant. I think it is very easy to be sold that story, especially at MIT—to be told that your job, your mission, is to solve the world’s great challenges, and that nothing else will suffice, nothing else will make your life meaningful. And, it’s admirable, in a way, to declare this the meaning of life. The world faces many, many great challenges that must be solved, and, surely, it must be our job to fix them.

The problem with this framing, I think, is that it makes the “everything else” of our lives mundane and unimportant, in a way that I just don’t believe. If you think about it for a few more moments, the chance that you or any other person will ever have a major, measurable impact on the world is slim to none, but each of us must have a reason to continue living. It may not be true that life itself has a meaning—but we must all have our own meanings to keep going.

And, in truth, I do think there is a meaning of life. I wrote three years ago, back in sophomore spring, that for me the meaning of life, in essence, is other people—in the communities we make and the relationships we have, the support we receive from other people and the support we give. I think this because it is the one thing in this world which makes me feel most human, that we interact with one another to make our lives better as a collective.⁠01 this presents a rather naïve view of human nature on the surface, but I think it <em>is</em> ultimately true. If the instinct to war and to act in our self-interest at any given turn was the dominant one, I don't think would have built cities and societies in the way that we have now. It is the one thing that gives me hope about humanity. I am sure there is probably an economic argument to be made that there are systems where self-interest <em>can</em> generate the complexities of our modern lives, but I find those models generally unconvincing because I'm ultimately not sure how many of these attributes of humans can be accurately modeled. Deep down, I’ve believed this even since high school, where I wrote that “to be little, positive parts of other people’s stories is perhaps the best we can hope to be, as we ourselves travel through life.”

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One other reason that I dislike the idea that one’s mission is to “change the world” is that it fails to present a comprehensive theory of change.⁠02 thanks, Petey. When we say we want something to change, the natural question in my mind is always “how?” When people say, “here’s something I’m mad about and here’s what I’m going to do,” I’m always thinking, “and then what?” How do we get from a point where you do something to a point where the thing you want changed is actually concretely better?

This has always been a pet peeve of mine, and, at this point, probably something I’m overly sensitive to, having spent a number of years in various student government positions here. People love saying “this is bad” without really having any idea about how to change it, or going to administrators without doing any kind of proactive work to build relationships and collaborate in a way that actually creates positive progress. And, although I, too, understand the cathartic effects of griping and the legitimacy of many frustrations, I can’t help but think that the ultimate focus needs to be on actions which will, ultimately, drive a specific, positive impact.

The “change the world” approach, to me, feels like one of these problematic cases—a mission statement without any sort of theory of change. This may seem like a strawman argument to you, but I do genuinely think there are lots of people who view their mission in life as “changing the world” without any regard as to the “how, specifically?” It’s the same reason that people in Silicon Valley keep trying to found new things rather than improving existing ones. In contrast, the intent to keep making other people’s lives better at a micro-local level, at least to me, presents a coherent theory of change—when we do kind things, other people become more likely to pay it forward, and slowly, but surely, things get better.⁠03 will a kinder world on its own solve climate change, or income inequality, or any of the other billion things facing our species? No, probably not. But, I think 1) we still have an obligation to make the world less sucky while we're still here and 2) kindness does facilitate the kind of collaborations, I think, that will need to solve these kinds of Big Problems. Again, maybe naïve, but, something I feel ultimately to be true.

So, that’s what I think. You don’t have to change the world. If you set that as your goal, your one true mission statement, you will more likely end up sad than anything else. But, if you aim at being, on net, a positive influence on the people around you, things might just work out.

part 2: art

One thing I’m very grateful to MIT for is that it has really allowed me to explore the limits of what I can do, in ways that I never quite imagined. I’ve picked up skills I didn’t think I’d ever learn; last year, in the playwright’s note for a play I wrote called Remembering Her, I put:

It is also a play about imagination. Inside and outside the theater, I want you to imagine boldly who you could be. For the prefrosh among us, MIT is a place where you have the opportunity to challenge yourself to do things you never thought possible. Dream big. If you’d told me four years ago that I’d be involved in student government, or conducting a pit orchestra, or writing a show for people to see, I’d have told you that you were mad. But here we are. When you find yourself stuck, imagine a different world, and then find a way to get there. You may find that it is easier than you think.

Let’s talk about that play. I wrote it in three days as an emergency back-up for Next Act⁠04 every year since 1985 (excepting the COVID years), a student group called Next Act has put on a musical in Next House during Campus Preview Weekend, meant to <del>inculcate</del> help encourage the prefrosh to come to MIT!. 2023, for reasons that I don’t really want to get into right now. I honestly don’t really remember how I wrote it—I just know I spent a lot of time at my laptop, basically talking to myself, imagining these characters talking to each other, until suddenly there were fifty pages of script in front of me, ready to be rehearsed and revised as necessary.

I really struggled during the rehearsal process for the show. I was constantly anxious, between the feeling of having my words read back to me and just the knowledge that I didn’t have a lot of time, if any, to revise anything that felt off. Every once in a while, I would begin to feel hopeful, like the play just might work, only to have it come crashing back down on me a couple of days later—up and down and up and down. I wanted to get off the train.

Tech week⁠05 the week before a show goes up, when all the <em>technical elements</em>, i.e., sets and props and costumes and lights and orchestra and Everything™, come together. and shows were like a fever dream. Suddenly, we had a stage and lights and chairs and a steering wheel⁠06 in the play, <a href="https://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/telling-the-tale/">Paolo played a teenager named Kevin</a>, who drives a Prius. The Prius is incredibly important, because it is, in fact, eco-friendly <em>and</em> compact. Shyeah. and a pit, and then an audience, and then suddenly it was all over. And, even during shows, my rollercoaster of emotions continued. Every audience was different, responding to different parts of the story night to night; they clapped for different scenes,⁠07 one of the parts of Next Act I'm proudest of—both for myself and for the actors—is when people applauded scenes that were purely dialogue; i.e., without music or singing. On the other hand, this happened most consistently after the absolutely dumbest comedic scene that has no relation to the rest of the plot, which was a bit humbling (but well-deserved for those actors), but it did happen with a couple other plot-related scenes which I am still quite happy about. laughed and “aw”ed at different moment. One day, I’d talk to a friend in more depth about the things I cared about the most in the story, the depiction of two different kinds of families or the mix between comedy and drama, and I’d feel happy about achieving my goals; the next day, I’d wake up and feel listless and hopeless again. After the second show, I wrote in my journal:

I am gaining confidence that the script is a good one, but I am increasingly faced with the fact that it is a musical that is not really a musical, and a play that is not really a play, and, apart from this brief moment in which it is producible, I am not sure exactly what value it brings—

And, there it is, that funny word. Value. I think the fundamental question, the question which I still haven’t really resolved, is “was it good enough?” It’s the reason I haven’t written about the show until now, a whole year later. I don’t know if it was good enough. Sure, it was well-received, certainly by my friends, and in general, by the audiences that saw it, but it also received so much additional effort above the text. The show had great actors, great lighting designers, great directors, great musicians; it was not my work on stage, but my work modulated and focused by the people around me.

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When I’m on this train of thought, I often think about Elizabeth Bishop’s⁠08 a poet who wrote "One Art", <a href="https://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/one-art/">which I parodied a long time ago</a>. One of my favorite poets, she also taught at MIT for some time, although I have never been able to figure out when, exactly. words about creative writing classes. In describing the comparative prevalence of students interested in writing courses, rather than English or literature courses, she once said:

It’s true, children sometimes write wonderful things, paint wonderful pictures, but I think they should be discouraged.

The thought is there: maybe I’m not good enough. Maybe I haven’t read enough of the classics, or even the moderns; maybe I don’t yet know or enough to produce great art, or maybe I’m just not built to produce it.

I’ve found it very hard to write these past few months. I feel like nothing I write will ever really be good enough; it will never have true, artistic merit, or, at the very least, it will not have the impact I want it to have on readers. I want my words to be able to reach out from the page, grab the reader, and spin them around until they see the world my way, at least for a moment, to make them truly, deeply feel something. I want my writing to have meaning, for it to be edifying, to make people feel like they’ve gotten something out of each and every sentence. But, language is imprecise, and I don’t know if I will ever achieve that in the way I truly, deeply want to.

I can feel this question—“was it good enough?” or “what’s the point?”—starting to creep outwards into my life. There are places where the point is clear, or, at the very least, it seems plausible that the things I’m doing have positive societal value. I still love teaching; I still love working on computer systems, however nerdy that pursuit is. It is really in the art where the questions sit at the forefront of my mind. Why conduct? Why sing? Why write? I don’t have any answers beyond this primal desire to do so, this feeling that when I’m conducting or when I’m writing, I’m losing myself in the music and the text, but, the question recurs: why do art when I might not ever be good enough to do it professionally, when I might not ever be able to do anything world-changing?

part 3: reconciliation

It is very hard to reconcile these two worlds of thoughts—this feeling that the idea of impact is overrated, and this overwhelming feeling that the art I make must have artistic value. Everything about art feels so fleeting and vulnerable that the importance of impact is magnified; after all, the relationship between a person and your art is always transitory. The moment of interaction is always brief, fleeting, and uncertain; a show happens, a poem is written and read, and then it is on to the next thing. How can I make something that lasts or that matters within that context?

In this sense, one of the only things that grounds me is, strangely enough, external validation.

I often feel uncertain about my relationship with external validation. It seems that for one’s happiness to be truly, deeply complete,⁠09 and there we are, back to the Aristotle. it must be lasting, and external validation is anything but. Yet, it is the thing that most often reminds me that I am achieving my goals, in whatever little ways I can. It reminds me that my art is doing the thing, that when people respond to my work, when they say they “feel seen,” it is becoming a small, positive part of someone else’s life, and that I can release it into the wild.

In other words, it provides me a theory of change.

I’ve often thought of writing as this kind of deeply lonely task. You sit at your desk, or, in my case, on my bed or on a couch, somewhere, and you type away until you either have a product or you give up. Your writing is founded on observation, sure, but that observation process, I think, is also more often conducted alone, in the solitary moments you have, passing through the world rather than living fully in it. I feel this way about music, too, sometimes. You practice and you learn your music on your own, and then you show up at rehearsal just to put it all together, and, yes, there’s a back and forth, but, ultimately, the practice of it, the individualness of it, feels solitary.

You might say, and you would be right, that the writing is just one part of the story. A theatre production—especially one like Next Act, where the whole goal of the project is accepting everyone⁠10 as in, we literally cast everyone who auditions for a show, and we teach them to act, sing, and dance, no matter their skill level. and building community—involves so many people working together in ways that are hard to express, and that, too, is an opportunity to make other people’s lives better, to be a kind collaborator and to work together to make something beautiful. And, similarly, I am grateful for all the feedback I’ve gotten over the years, in poetry workshops and orchestra rehearsals, and for all the work people have invested in things for me, from pit musicians to first readers⁠11 almost everything I've written for the blogs, for instance, goes through a first read, usually from Paolo, Shuli, or CJ. this post was read by my roommate, Krit! to actors to everyone else in between, which has made my life and my work better in countless ways.

But, in the moment, when you are working away on a project on your own, it is very easy to forget. It is easy to feel like the audience is the void. That nothing is ever going to respond to your work, to these collections of glyphs on a screen or to the music you are making. And when the audience is the void, it is easy to forget why you should be making art in the first place.

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Since childhood, I’ve been a big fan of keeping memorabilia. I have so many different objects, from brochures to maps to countless programs from all the shows and concerts I’ve seen or been involved in. I’d like to think I have a pretty good memory, but the concrete objects remind me of the things I’ve done and the places I’ve been in a way that feels more visceral and important.

One of my special collections lives outside of my memorabilia crate,⁠12 and, yes, it is a crate. residing instead in the top-most drawer in my desk. It’s a collection of every hand-written thank you note and birthday card and everything else I’ve ever received. Whenever I get a kind email, a note, I file it away for moments where I feel like I am treading water in the void. I read them to remind me that my art and my life have a purpose, and that, as I work, I am still making steps towards achieving it. That the little actions we take each day to make each other’s lives better do matter.

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And so it is these kinds of moments which kept me going through and after Next Act. I’ve written before that I believe one of the highest compliments that an artist can receive is “this made me cry”; when the things we make can evoke an emotion strong enough in someone else to make them cry. After the first performance, my Head of House,⁠13 at MIT, there is usually a faculty member who lives in the house and helps manage the team of Graduate Residential Assistants and generally serves as a positive influence to the house. Our HoH is Pablo Jarillo-Herrero, who does <a href="https://news.mit.edu/2020/twists-magic-angle-graphene-map-0508">some pretty cool stuff with "magic angle" graphene</a>. who’d been a part of my time at Next House all four years, told me that it made him cry. Another friend told me it was the first time he’d seen a non-conventional family represented so movingly on stage. It worked. I had added something positive to their lives, however small and transitory.

Even still, you forget. It’s so hard to remember the joy and the purpose of making art—every time I put down the pen, it takes me so much more energy to pick it back up again, because I just worry and worry and worry, that it won’t be good enough, rather than thinking about the small, positive differences I could make. I’ve been working on a play again this semester, and it is has been so much harder to write than anything I’ve written before. The expectations and the stakes feel higher, in a way that makes it hard to keep making forward progress, rather than just throwing one’s arms up and giving up.

I came back to Next Act this year, this time in a much smaller role: I helped vocal direct and then played percussion⁠14 I kinda got drafted into doing this, but, honestly, I didn't know how much of a joy it would be to just sit around and make noises—I had a glockenspiel, a xylophone, a slapstick, a shaker, some sleigh bells, and a keyboard with which I could make a library of other noises. Truly lovely. On the other hand, I am <em>very</em> not used to counting rests. in the pit orchestra. The show was Legally Blonde, which is one of my favorite musicals, and our conductor was one of my good friends, who lives on 4W⁠15 a living community in Next House, where I lived during my four years of undergrad. and played in the pit for Heathers, my very first conducting gig, just over a year ago. I enjoyed feeling like I was serving a purpose—imparting the wisdom which I’ve sopped up from years of choir in the first role, and then just making a bunch of noises at the right time⁠16 well, most of the time. in the second one.

At the second show, during intermission, somebody came up to me and thanked me for Remembering Her. They said that it’d helped them cope with their friend’s passing a month before.

And I remembered again. I remembered why it all matters so much.

part 4: be kind

Really, that’s all there is, at the end of the day. Be kind to yourself. Be kind to others. Use your life to be a little, positive part of someone else’s story. And, hey, maybe along the way you’ll solve one of the world’s great challenges; maybe you’ll find a job you really love, or a passion that keeps you going, or both, or neither. But, in any case, you’ll have done something that mattered.

Maybe you’re not the kind of person who needs a drawerful of notes and anecdotes to remind you that, occasionally, the things you do in the world help other people, that they matter. Maybe you’re not even convinced that these things matter at all in the long run, and we must agree to disagree on the premise entirely. Even still, I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s someone in your life who might believe these things, who might need those notes to keep going. So, you know, check in on them. Say “thank you.” Because, at the end of the day, who are we except for the people who made us, us?

I want to leave you with a monologue from the play, which is kind of about all of this and is kind of about the passage of time, but is certainly something I believe. It is one of the only pieces of my writing I stand by without a hint of reservation.

RACHEL: I guess, when we lost your dad… I didn’t know what we were gonna do. And I was so afraid that we would forget him. And, in some ways, we have. People we love will always be entering and leaving our lives. We’ll never be able to remember every moment precisely, every laugh and smile, every kiss and every disagreement. These things fade, and that’s okay.

KEVIN: But what if I don’t want to forget?

RACHEL: Memories fade, but their impacts don’t. You know how people say “you are the company you keep”? That’s what they mean. The people you spend time with change you, and if you remember that, and you honor the ways they changed you, well—maybe that’s the best way we can remember them.