An Existentialist Reading of “Mažas Amžinai”: Jessica Shy’s Philosophical Meditation on Time, and Being

Sveiki All,

I recently discovered Jessica Shy's profound 2025 release "Mažas Amžinai," and I felt compelled to share my philosophical interpretation of this remarkable piece. The song resonates deeply with existentialist themes that speak to our contemporary condition.

The Tyranny of Temporal Existence

The opening verses confront us with the modern predicament of temporal alienation. When Shy contemplates how clocks "bend us" and dictate our paths, she articulates what Heidegger called "thrownness" (Geworfenheit) – our involuntary submission to temporal structures that precede and define us. The unconscious rushing she describes isn't merely about physical speed; it's the existential velocity that prevents authentic self-encounter.

This temporal anxiety echoes Sartre's notion of "bad faith" – we flee into busyness to avoid confronting the radical freedom and responsibility of our existence. The desire for a place "where running is no longer necessary" represents not escapism, but the yearning for what Levinas termed "infinity" – a mode of being beyond the totalizing grasp of chronological time.

The Paradox of Circular Corners

The song's most striking metaphysical image – a place "where the sun rises in the west" and "all corners are round" – deserves careful philosophical attention. This isn't mere poetic whimsy; it's a profound disruption of Euclidean certainty and linear causality. Round corners suggest a topology of existence where sharp distinctions dissolve, where the rigid categories that structure our reality become fluid.

This spatial impossibility mirrors Camus's absurd – the confrontation between human need for meaning and the universe's indifference. Yet unlike Camus's Sisyphus, condemned to eternal repetition, Shy's vision offers transformation: to be "small forever" (mažas amžinai) is to embrace what Nietzsche called the "eternal return" not as burden, but as liberation.

The Question of Sufficient Being

Perhaps the most existentially charged moment comes with the anxious questioning: "Is it enough that I exist? To be interesting?" This strikes at the heart of existential anxiety – what Kierkegaard called "the dizziness of freedom." In our performative age, where social media transforms existence into spectacle, the question gains urgent relevance. Are we condemned to perpetual self-justification, or can mere being suffice?

The desire to live somewhere "where not loving is difficult" and embrace our imperfection suggests a radical acceptance reminiscent of Beauvoir's ethics of ambiguity. Rather than striving for an impossible perfection, we're invited to inhabit our flaws as constitutive of authentic existence.

Eternal Childhood as Existential Strategy

The recurring motif of remaining "small forever" shouldn't be read as regression or Peter Pan syndrome. Instead, it evokes what Nietzsche called the "child" stage in Thus Spoke Zarathustra – the creative, playful mode of being that transcends both the camel's burden-bearing and the lion's rebellion. This eternal smallness is openness to wonder, the capacity for perpetual becoming rather than static being.

In our age of accelerated obsolescence and compulsory growth, choosing to remain "small" becomes an act of resistance. It's a rejection of the productivity paradigm that reduces human value to economic output, embracing instead what Giorgio Agamben calls "potentiality" – the power not to actualize, to remain in the realm of possibility.

Conclusion: A Song for Our Times

"Mažas Amžinai" emerges as more than a pop song; it's a philosophical text for our hypermodern condition. Jessica Shy has crafted a work that speaks to the fundamental anxieties of contemporary existence while offering a vision of alternative being – not through grand gestures, but through the radical act of staying small, staying open, staying possible.

I was so moved by this song's philosophical depth that I've created a Turkish translation and video interpretation, which you can find on my channel here: https://youtu.be/IdaECaUzZYs

I hope it helps spread this beautiful Lithuanian art to a wider audience. Would love to hear your thoughts on both the song and this existentialist reading!