What is the meaning of life?
I guess the real question is “What is the meaning of MY life?” as opposed to “What do I think isexpected of me from my life?” which supposes that the expectation is from others, spouse, parents, children, society, religion, work etc.
“The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.” Alan Watts
Trouble is, if you just be then a whole bunch of ego driven stories bubble up in the mind:
- About what you should be doing
- About how you will be judged by others
- About how you need to be successful
- About how you judge yourself
- About the need for money, status and owning / getting stuff
“We are afraid to take responsibility for ourselves, to fully define ourselves in our own terms. So we give responsibility of defining who we are to somebody else and then struggle to live up to those demands. Most of all we are afraid of our emotions and feeling our feelings.Because if we acknowledged our true emotions and feelings, then took full responsibility for them, we wouldhave to leave the treadmill of our lives behind and take full responsibility for creating something more emotionally meaningful based around happiness.”
Conscious versus unconscious needs and desires
For me the question needs to be spilt into two parts; firstly, what unconscious DNA driven animal desires I have, then, secondly, what the logical, rational, linguistic and non-animal part of my conscious mind thinks it needs?
It’s hard to fight against nature (unconscious mind and DNA) the urge to breathe, the desire for food, water and sleep, the wanting to reproduce, and the whole ‘animal’ desire to keep the body alive through connection and security. These inner desires and needs have done exceptionally well to keep our species alive and prevalent across our planet achat en ligne cialis. We don’t need to think too much about these desires that are just latent inside us and often we take them for granted. If you hold your breath for 1 minute you’ll remember how important breathing is! Far more important that what job you have or which car you drive.
I feel that the real challenges that we struggle with come from our conscious mind, our thoughts and beliefs of who we think we are and what we think we should do – and the self beliefs that (in our mind) we hold dear and form the foundations of how we need to act and react in this world.
Fixed positionality and opposites?
I have spent a few years experimenting with positionalities and differing points of view to see what effect they may have on my feelings and emotional reactions to others – and the results have really startled me. There is no right or wrong, good or bad, best or worst – they are just opinions based on what is important to you, based on your beliefs and based on your point of view in that moment. If I was starving politics would not be important to me, finding food would be, however, if I had all the food I needed then using politics to get food for others might be important.
We also jump to the conclusion so easily that one thing is good and another is bad – this is making one thing right and another wrong – it is setting up a duality that seems to be real, however is so dependant on context. Good is not the opposite of bad – there is either lots of goodness or not much goodness, you see, as you stop looking at things as opposites and as right or wrong, you have to begin to consider the context of the subject, you might say you need to see the bigger picture.
What is happening right NOW?
Many humans fall into the trap of projecting their needs forward in time “when I get that job, then I can go on holiday” or they mull around thoughts from the past “it wasn’t fair that I lost my job”either way, they are missing the point, which is, you can only experience the “right now” this moment right now. If you spend this moment right now worrying about the future or commiserating about the past then you have lost that moment, it’s gone forever – you can only live in the right now and, right now, this moment, you don’t have any problems – you are just reading this post – you are just being.
So if you decide to sit down and do nothing – do it fully, don’t feel guilty about doing nothing, be in the moment and put all your attention on what you are doing in that moment, driving, relaxing, painting, writing, working, whatever you are doing immerse yourself in the moment and focus on nothing else – give it a try and see what happens.
Conclusion
So, I don’t know the meaning of life – perhaps it is just to be? Perhaps it is to change the world? Perhaps it is to nurture life? Perhaps it is to raise families? I suppose it doesn’t matter really, as long as you are happy, calm, connected and emotionally stable.