COURTESY OF LEO LIN
Trying to outthink The Thinker... but all I’m really wondering is what’s for dinner.
Hi Leo,
It’s Leo — from the past.
I just had some of the driest chicken of my life at Hopkins Cafe, and now I’m in the overcrowded Brody Reading Room having just spent 30 minutes playing Brawl Stars instead of studying. Classic.
Looking at the endless construction outside, I can’t help but think: Dang it. They should refund part of my tuition for this.
At this point, the initial: Wow. I’m at Johns Hopkins! has evolved into Wow. I’m at Johns Hopkins. Now what?
Studying philosophy here has been interesting. Every time someone asks about my major, I smirk like a magician revealing their final trick: “I study philosophy.” People look at me like I just said I moonlight as a medieval alchemist: equal parts impressed, confused and wondering if I’ll ever make money.
They say if you’re confused about life, look at the people around you. Lately, that advice has been hitting too close to home, especially with so many of my friends diving into finance. Investment banking seems to be the holy grail: Everyone’s either talking about it, chasing it or mysteriously “grinding” for it.
I recently interviewed for an investment banking internship and spoke with the CEO of a financial consulting firm. He asked about my interests. I told him I liked thinking about God and whether God is real — because, you know, that’s a totally normal thing to say in a finance interview.
Turns out, he was a Christian. We ended up talking for 40 minutes. At one point, he told me he sometimes wakes up from nightmares about dying, standing before God and realizing he hadn’t accomplished anything meaningful.
Then, he hit me with: “You’re only happy about your investment banking job the first day you get your offer.”
Wow. That’s like hearing a magician tell you the trick isn’t real while they’re still on stage.
And that conversation stuck with me. Because if he — a guy who already made it — was haunted by these thoughts, what hope did I have?
I studied philosophy to find meaning. But deep down, I’ve always had this quiet fear: What if I never find an answer? What if I spend my life chasing abstract principles and end up with nothing concrete? And if God isn’t real, then let’s be honest: Spending my life searching for a nonexistent being in the sky would be kind of hilarious. Maybe I should’ve just been an investment banker. At least their illusions pay well.
But seriously, what is the point of all this? Everyone around me is sprinting toward something: a high-paying job, a prestigious title, a LinkedIn flex. But for what?
And then there’s me, sitting in Brody Cafe, staring at my philosophy notes, asking questions that don’t have clear answers. Is that enough?
I used to think meaning was something you just found, like a treasure at the end of some long, arduous quest. It was either “God gave you meaning.” or “being a rational being and following reason gives you meaning.” But what if neither of these is true?
What if meaning isn’t something waiting to be discovered, but something we create? Maybe life isn’t about uncovering some grand, universal truth, but about choosing what matters to us — defining our own purpose instead of waiting for someone else to hand it to us. Like Albert Camus would say, when confronted with the absurd — the realization that life has no inherent meaning — the best thing to do is to embrace it; rebel against it by moving on.
So, future me: Did we figure it out? Did we find something worth waking up for? Something that makes us feel alive, not just employed? Are we actually doing something meaningful, or did we just follow the current because it was easier?
I hope we didn’t settle. I hope we kept questioning, kept pushing, kept searching, even when it was difficult and seemed endless at times. I hope that if we truly find a purpose that purpose won’t be just about what we do but about who we become and the virtues we develop — the kind of person we are when no one’s watching, the things we care about when there’s no audience to impress. I really hope that’s the case, or the world would truly be as superficial as an investment banker’s “work-life balance”: a myth spoken about in hushed tones but never actually seen in the wild.
And if we still don’t have all the answers, that’s okay too. Maybe the whole point is to keep looking, to never stop being curious, to never stop asking, What else is out there? Maybe it's the process of looking for purpose, although it might not exist, that gives you purpose.
Oh, and I also hope we’ve stopped eating from Hopkins Cafe.
See you in the future.
— Leo Lin (from the past)
Leo Lin is a freshman from Xiamen, Fujian, China studying Philosophy and History.
