Herman Hesse's Siddhartha: A Work on true Meaning - Ryan Hinton

     Recently, I finished reading Herman Hesse's Siddhartha, a novel published sometime between 1919 and 1921, which focuses on a young man's journey to find meaning in his life. This book was recommended and given to me by my chalant friend, who is really into philosophy and likes to ponder things. I had no prior experience reading any kind of translated text - as Siddhartha is translated from its original German - aside from reading 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. By pure chance, however, Siddhartha turned out to be the perfect book to read alongside a class about Journey and Meaning Making. Siddhartha's whole life is spent trying to find meaning, whether that be when he tries to conquer his self and his own desires or embrace his self and his own desires. Siddhartha constantly struggles with meaning, trying to find passion and understand how the world works. Siddhartha's life can be described as hollow or even despairful because Siddhartha cannot understand basic emotion, for him, this basic emotion is seen as an embrace of the self and he believes himself to be above. This book's foil to Dr. Redick's teachings about finding meaning and embracing meaning upon the journey and finding oneself on these many different hikes creates an interesting contrast where I can clearly see that one person lives life fully while the other lives life dull. I believe this book is incredibly meaningful because it showcases so much of what people encounter in their lives, whether that be unfulfillment, a misleading desire to be the best, or issues with gambling, Siddhartha goes through even single emotion of life. I might even try fasting every once in a while, because having three special skills: Thinking, Waiting, and Fasting is pretty cool. 

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