12. Dr. Kim Garchar (Part II)

Dr. Kim Garchar, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Kent State University and clinical ethicist, is back—and if part I was the practical reality of death and dying in America, part II is the metaphysical milkshake of mortality, as promised.Before grad school and clinical ethics, Kim was a math major who dropped out of an applied engineering program when she realized what she loved about math was the theory. She takes us back to her twenties, teaching ski lessons, waiting tables, and playing volleyball in a Colorado mountain town. Then she discovered Sartre, Camus, and Beauvoir—the classic French existentialists—and spent years reconciling that resonance with her Catholic upbringing. Their core claim: we are born without consent and with no pre-loaded purpose. We are simply born, and we get to create our own meaning. It's both terrifying and freeing—Kim explains Sartre's nausea, Camus' abyss, and Beauvoir's belief that your freedom only fully exists when everyone else's does too.From there we journey to the Myth of Sisyphus and the question of hope—why Camus insisted we can't hope, only act—and land on Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning, where the prisoners of Auschwitz weren't surviving on hope—they were surviving on their why.Then we go wide: monotheism and the promise of heaven, Judaism's epistemic humility about not knowing what comes next, and secular Buddhism's answer to the question of self—no core self, only energy, only connection. Kim makes the case that when you actually believe you and the stranger next to you are made of the same stuff, it changes how you treat them. It's also, coincidentally, where she confesses her own moral failing.We end on the idea that's been under this whole conversation from the start: live your beliefs, not just hold them. Kim tells a story about her grandfather—a man she adored, a man who truly lived his values, but who had a real moral blind spot—and the one sentence she said to him that made him pause for the first time in his life.If you've ever wondered what happens when you actually take your beliefs seriously—not just on Sunday, but every day—or you've been avoiding the bigger questions because they feel too big to hold, this one's for you. Bring curiosity, not fear.