The Heads of Janus Blog

    While running, I always stop to walk through the  cemetery I pass on my route. It feels wrong to just run past the dead and ignore them, as many, including myself, often do. While paying my respects, I noticed an inherent contrast between this moment and the rest of the run. I wondered to myself why this was so. Of course, there was the difference between running on the sidewalk and walking through the cemetery, but I believed the contrast went deeper. I felt a sort of disparity between life and death. Upon further reflection, this seemed to make sense to me. In a way, when we exercise, we feel a fullness of life that our bodies usually don't experience. Our hearts pump quicker, our lungs work feverishly to engulf enough oxygen, and our muscles burn energy to continue the strenuous activity. Our bodies works near the fullest of its capacity. However, exercising can also be looked at as bringing the body to its closest point to failure. It is when our body brinks failu...

If you ask an existentialist, or a self proclaimed one on the internet, which Greco-Roman mythological figure most resembles the nature of man, they are likely to respond with Sisyphus, due to his eternal struggle that Camus relates to our interaction with the absurd. While Sisyphus is a sound comparison, and one that is strangely encouraging, I would like to suggest another mythological character that embodies the human condition: Janus, the Greek god of duality. Janus embodies all opposites, the begging and the end, entry and exit, war and peace, and optimism and pessimism to name a few. He is a contradiction, with his two heads akin to those of comedy and  tragedy. And what is a human, but a contradiction? Humanity has his fingertip on the divine, and his foot in the beast. Ask yourself this: is greatness, achieved by the overcoming of our vices and instincts, us overcoming our humanity? But, then, is this desire for what is greater not in our human nature? To succumb to letharg...