Meaning of Life

In this video, you will see a collection of videos taken while I was longboarding through my favorite parts of the city. It is filmed from my perspective so the experience feels first-hand. You will also see photos of the most meaningful things in my life, as well as a couple of monologues to sum up my thoughts in a little more concise fashion. The parts of my life that are most meaningful to me include any part where I am on my longboard, looking at the city, reading a book (or when books are clearly displayed in the video or any time where you can see the word revolution somewhere in the picture or video. I structured it in this fashion as a kind of subtle label to identify what is and is not truly meaningful to me. The way I see it, there is nothing "meaningless" in life as far as I'm concerned, so I gave no truly definitive indication of either meaningful or meaningless. Truly I think that all of life is meaningful, so the entirety of the video is meaningful to me. I feel like these are the things that make a life worth living. Your life is what you do, and doingthese things make my life interesting, at least to me. I would certainly have liked to include to revolution taking place, but the world isn't quite ready for the revolution just yet. Thinking about it, I would have included the demolition of old rules and the new, rule-less society being instated. I would have liked to include videos of me climbing Mt. Everest and kayaking down the white water rapids, but I haven't done those things (yet).

VIDEO


Real Meaning Vid from Tom O'Brien on Vimeo.

Analysis
4. What seem to be some of the main criteria you use (emotionally +/or mentally) to assess how meaningful an aspect of your life is?

Ultimately, the things that I consider meaningful in my life have to meet certain criteria that I have established. The criteria are vast which means I allow a lot of things to bear the title meaningful, and I accept that things have meaning for others, even If I feel like they don't. So perosnally anything is meaningful if you find yourself thinking about it even when you are away from it. Like longboarding for me. When I'm sitting at a desk in class, I'm just dying to go out and crush some pavement all day long. The same goes for my hometown NYC. When I go away on vacation, despite it being a nice change of scenery, I long for the ozone and gasoline smell of the city, the shuffling interactions between people on cramped subway cars, and the general urban lullaby composed of ambulances, sirens, helicopters, and the cacophany of people. I choose these as examples because they are represented most prominently in my video, but I find many other things meaningful, though perhaps not as much as these two.

5. Is there a pattern in what you find meaningful or meaningless? What are some of the elements in that pattern?

I suppose that I might have answered that question in the answer above, but if not, then the pattern between what's meaningful is that it seems to be like NYC, in that a lot of the prominent things in my life are urban based or affected by urban environments. I love my city and it has the most mening to me. From this, i go into my love for longboarding, easiest to ride in a paved urban environment. I guess you might say that the area I grew up in profoundly affected my interets and how much they mean to me.

6. Looking at the video as a whole – is it a fairly honest/accurate depiction of your life? Does it make you seem interesting/special/exciting?

I'd say that for a fair and balanced representation of my life it would have to be longer and it would be a little more profane. In all honesty it more or less sums up a large part of my interests, not necessarily my life. And I honestly could care less wheteher it makes me look cool or intersting. It's what I love to do, people just have to take for what it is. Some people might like it, others might hate it. I can't provide their argument. If I had to say so, it probably makes me seem like no more or less than I would be in class.

7. Does your life seem meaningful from an outside perspective? Is it from an inside perspective? Why?

From an outside perspective looking in, and I'm assuming the person looking in won't be digging too far under the surface and truly analyzing this, I guess this looks more like a video journey of NYC from a longboard perspective. I think if people look at it with an x-ray analysis, considering the song choices for backdrop, they might see that it isn't entirely made up of teenage bullshit angst, and that something in here is insightful. From my inside perspective, I find it to be a meaningful video because of how it combines what i hold dear and makes it easy to digest.

8. What questions do you have about living a meaningful life at this point?

Truthfully, none. No one is going to tell me whether or not my life is meaningful. Hakuna Matata.