If hell exists, it’s a library full of punk weirdos

Do you remember sitting in Philosophy class wondering why you were learning about some dead man’s thoughts and ramblings? I do.

My philosophy teacher didn’t understand the main point of what he was teaching.

We heard about Nietzsche’s existential dread, Camus’s absurd little rock, Sartre and his crushing freedom, and Foucault’s society-is-one-big-panopticon paranoia.

All of them had something in common.

The ability to think.

To dig.

To sit with the uncomfortable long enough to come up with an answer.

My teacher couldn’t teach me how to think, but these dead men’s thoughts and ramblings showed me something worse.

I already knew how.

And you do too.

You ever stare at the ceiling at 3am thinking about life and choices? Overanalyzed a text you received? Asked yourself “why am I this way?”?

Well, congratulations.

You did the philosophy thing.

Philosopher sounds like a big title. Something you have to study for. It is not.

It was never this big, scary thing. It’s always been noticing, wondering, digging. Staring at a tree root and spiraling about existence.

Academia refines it. Doesn’t invent it.

Nietzsche was questioning god earlier than most kids begin to question homework. He didn’t learn that in school.

Thinking out loud has never been safe, though.

Socrates drank poison.

Galileo Galilei was locked inside his house.

Half the women who observed nature too closely got called witches and burned alive.

It’s always been inconvenient.

Always a little rebellious.

Always punk as hell.

How could this crazed French man see a building and think “This is society. We’re all self-policing forever”?

I wanted to do that too.

I became obsessed with noticing the tiny details and tying them to ideas.

To meaning.

I wanted to be a punk philosopher like Foucault.

So I just… became one.

Because why not?

So if hell really is one big library full of punk weirdos,

I’m sitting next to Foucault.