International Excellence Scholar, Guyang Lin, is studying the LLM Qualifying Law at Birkbeck. Prior to this, he studied a BSc in Philosophy and Economics and a Master’s in Philosophy and Public Policy. Here he shares a philosophical anecdote about what inspired him to study law.
A Crisis of Meaning
In my criminal law seminar this term, we discussed a real case. In 2010, a 67-year-old man smothered his terminally ill wife, unable to bear watching her suffer day after day. He was convicted, though the court accepted his mental illness as grounds for diminished responsibility.
Mental illness is more common, and more destructive, than we tend to assume. In China, the lifetime prevalence of the six major categories of mental illness is 16.6%. A growing number of young people are dropping out of school and isolating themselves at home under the weight of academic pressure and bullying.
When nihilism strikes, how do we regain meaning?
A Friend Who Vanished
I thought of a friend who spent years paralysed by nihilism and self-sabotage before he broke free of it. He had been a brilliantly talented student, but the shift began after he won a place on his dream course at a university in London. He started saying he had studied enough and needed to “enjoy life while young.” His writing from that time was polished but lacking in enthusiasm, except for one poem about a young man who goes into the mountains seeking the meaning of life, and finds he’s too afraid to stray from the path everyone expects of him. That poem moved me, I played guitar over it, and we became friends.
After graduation he faced a grim job market with disdain, insisting he could succeed easily if he tried, but that he needed to focus on “what matters” first. As rejections mounted, he retreated and locked himself away, refusing our invitations, calling his isolation a virtuous “low-desire” life. He called himself a freelance writer but produced nothing beyond a pile of unfinished drafts.
He wasn’t happy in his comfort, zone he was afraid. Each rejection had worn down the confidence he’d built as a top student, until he stopped trying altogether. He later admitted that during those stress-free days, his life felt as if it were turning pale: he had mistaken the avoidance of pain for happiness.
The Return to the World
Then his family told him they would no longer support his drifting. Frightened for his future, he went out one December afternoon and, by nightfall, had found a job starting the next day.
A few days later, we were on a train together and he suddenly got a nosebleed. His body, he said, simply hadn’t adjusted to the exertion. He stepped off at his stop and hurried away, unbothered. I knew then that he had changed. He later told me that rubbing hand cream into his cracked skin at night, he found himself wondering what kind of person he used to be.
I asked if he was still writing. He said he’d found inspiration in a piece of history, and told me a fable: pilgrims to the Potala Palace spend months prostrating themselves every three steps along mountain roads, and weep when they finally arrive. His past self, he said, had been like a tourist who simply flew in. He could see the palace and felt nothing, too exhausted by the flight to feel any awe. Without the effort of the journey, there’s no real wonder at the end of it.
Small Acts, Real Meaning
Last year, when his grandfather needed minor surgery, he sent money home without hesitation, relieved that, unlike his old self, he now had the means to actually help. That sense of being useful became the foundation of his rebuilt confidence. He told me he still wasn’t living the life he wanted, but that once his feet had touched rough reality, his anxiety had actually lessened. Comfort, he said, makes it hard to step outward; it was exhaustion and competition that brought back his drive.
He’d started reading Viktor Frankl, the psychologist who survived a Nazi concentration camp and concluded that people constantly search for meaning, and that among all values, the meaning found in how we face unavoidable suffering is the highest.
I think the meaning of life isn’t something fixed and pre-existing; it’s forged through the struggle against reality. What we think we love may fade once we actually have it, and the future may hold expectations we can’t yet see. In his recent drafts for a story about two soldiers who flee battle, then choose to return, there was a vividness I hadn’t seen in his writing before. It felt real, and I loved it.
Finding My Own Meaning
His change made me look at my own routine life. My guitar had gathered dust; my old philosophy notes and dissertation files sat untouched, along with a regret I’d written down once about not choosing jurisprudence sooner. So I stopped settling. Notebook in hand, I started heading to Birkbeck’s Law School after work, finally being honest about what I wanted. Life has felt more vivid ever since.
There’s a well-known story about Frankl treating a patient’s insomnia: his remedy was to stop trying to sleep, and instead force himself to stay awake as long as possible. When a problem is pushed to its extreme, we can’t solve it by fighting our own thoughts, we have to act, and confront the thing we fear directly. Through action, the way we face our problems changes. Believing in our own capacity to act may be a stronger antidote than a mind simply free of pressure. Perhaps that’s the truest antidote to nihilism.
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