The Greatest Existentialist

"Master", asked a disciple of the Rabbi, "What is the meaning of existence?". The Rabbi answered, "That is a beautiful question. Why trade it for an answer?"

A succint reply, perhaps even a subtle rebuttal, of the infernal question that has been a thorn in the flesh of numerous works of literary and philosophical excellence. The biblical book of Ecclesiastes, one of my personal favourites, starts off with a scathing denouncement of the meaning of life. Shelving aside the eventual twist in its conclusion, and switching philosophical alliances, we witness a somewhat ingenious reversal of subject-object relations in this vast wasteland of futility, when Zarathustra lamented to the sun, "O Great Star! Would you still be as brilliant, if you had not us to shine for?" Constant throughout these blabberings, however, is simply the desire to blabber in the first place. This, the Rabbi elegantly refutes. Sure, we all understand the ingrained compulsion to fulfil linguistic adjacency pairs, providing some form of 'answer' to every 'question' asked of us. But shall we project such petty compulsions blindly, even unto matters of unimaginable significance, such as the meaning of existence? How important it is to remember, that in the primordial soup of being, before any sound vibrated throughout the cosmos, there was only silence. Sadly thus, the discourses of our beloved existentialists fall prey to a vicious inference circularity - an uttered word demands further cognitive effort, perpetuating yet further meaninglessness. I herebly salute you, Rabbi, greatest existentialist that ever lived.