Going home for thanksgiving is one of the biggest love/hate relationships I have ever had. I miss home when I’m in Claremont, but the second I get home and my mother refuses to have thanksgiving or simply “forgets” to do so I realize that I would like to be back in Claremont.
So why do I go home for thanksgiving if everytime I do I am upset that my mother or anyone in my family doesn’t want to bake a casserole with me??!!?
(Yes, I’m using protocol #10 as an emotional outlet because I spent thanksgiving writing my thesis in my brother’s room eating a warmed up piece of salmon since no one wanted to bake a casserole with me.)
In other words, is it worth it to suffer and justify the drive up to my house because spending time with my family will improve the relationships inside my family if I come home in the future?
I basically come home as an attempt to fix my family dynamics in the future, but really I just suffer.
THIS IS LITERALLY ALL I WANTED
Wait so how are we bringing philosophy into the fact that I’m currently suffering being at home in hopes that my family dynamics will be better in the future if I’m here now?
Beauvoir states that the ends don’t actually justify the means, and that “the means” which define the end” (134)
So basically, Beauvoir is challenging the idea that it is okay to suffer in the present if it means that the future this problem is “fixed”
Therefore, suffering in the present moment witnessing the chaotic relationship between my mother and sister trying to fix them in order to HOPE that my doing is going to fix it all and make me happier in the long run is actually not worth it?
The future is “so closely bound up with the present that it composes with it a single temporal form” (125). I don’t technically exist in the future…so why am I thinking ahead when I’m currently in this present moment?
Beauvior would say that just because I’m upset that no one baked a casserole with me so I try to fix my family does not mean that I will be happier in the future. I should not bound the present and future together. The future is completely unknown, therefore the means cannot justify the ends.
