I've been meaning to write something like this for some time now and I just feel like doing it now. I could just post in [plug]
the positivity thread [/plug] but I'd like this to be a thread in itself if it's alright. This is just a conglomeration of my attitudes and views on life as well as a critical reflection (no pun intended). It is a bit lengthy, but I thank whoever takes the time to read about the small truths of an inadequate man. I'm sure those 10 page threads you read about cars or shoes would be just the same amount of reading.
Some of it may be over your heads but the main message is quite graspable and practical:
Everyone says it's hard to live your word, and I also believe that this is one of the hardest endeavors of all. So I've been testing myself the past few years and I have had mixed results. I used to promote the idea of permanent happiness but this intuitively seems implausable and I've realized that it may very well be. I used to promote the idea that we should always pursue our ultimate lifelong goals, but it struck me that our day-to-day lives, no matter how minute and superficial at times, need attention also. I used to say never waste time, but I waste it all the time. So what can I yield out of these mountains of optimistic wisdom? What has indeed stayed the same?
A monumental question in philosophy deals with how
our world relates to the
real world (ie how the world in our minds relates to the world 'outside'). What it seems to me is that
real world is largely
our world anyway. What I mean by this is that the way we see the world is based on our experiences and points of view. We all see the world differently because we all have had different lives. The same 'objective' world is recreated by
x amount of times everyday, where
x is the number of people in the world. This is what Albert Camus meant when he said "the world escapes us because it becomes itself again." He meant that we may never grasp the objective 'outside' world because we create and live in our own worlds every day.
Why do things really matter? Why is something important? Things matter, things are important, because
you make them important. Sure, there seems to be things of pressing concern, but how pressing would they actually be if you didn't acknowledge them? You can change your beliefs radically, and I'm sure that many of you have in the past, but how overpoweringly true have both sets of beliefs been at the time that you believed them? The world can be created by God, the world can be an accident of chemical reaction or the world can be a dream that you are taking to be real. How much does it really matter? What value does one have over another if it is indeed true but you don't accept it? What is true is what you want to be true. Whatever you believe, so you shall see.
So how does this relate to how I first start off? It relates because it elicits the paramount value of our own perspectives. "Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it," as they say.
This is what has stayed constant throughout my trials, tribulations and reflections. My viewpoints have transformed in different degrees but I've always had a viewpoint; I've always been living. This seems to be a fairly normative observation, but it is indeed a profound one. In everything you've experienced, in any belief you've ever had,
you have been there to experience it. Maybe that's why we're sick of ourselves sometimes, because we can never escape ourselves (haha). We are always here to experience and live. We may change in our mind sets and in our bodies, but the thread of existence and life remains the same.
The first thing that marked my profound change of consciousness was a lecture I heard when I was about 15 (I've written about this in a
previous thread). It was entitled: "How to get what I really want in life." The lecturer explained that to know
how to get what you really want, you must figure out
what you really want. So people proceeded by naming certain features of their ideal life: good family, stable career, good spouse, money, etc. The speaker asked us to examine the commonality of all these things. The commonality was 'happiness.' All of these things that we wanted, all of the things we desire are to bring us some sort of happiness on one level or another. In short, we really just wanted to be happy.
The speaker zoomed in on the example of 'money' due to its popular contrasting value with 'happiness.' The soundness of the following argument I can evaluate more critically now, but it what he was trying to reveal that made an impact and is still important to me. He said something like the following:
"OK, so money seems to be a popular staple of happiness for the majority of people. But envision with me this: your happiness is a
thing. Something that you can have, something that you can give away, something that you can trade. Now, would trade your happiness to me for $10?"
Of course, we all answered "no."
"Alright, would you trade your happiness to me for say.. oh, $1000?"
We thought... well, "no."
"You drive a hard bargain... what about 1 million dollars?"
After
some thinking, we eventually said "no."
"Fine. How much money does Bill Gates have right now? Ok, would you trade me your happiness for 70 billion dollars?"
After considerably more thinking, we decided to say "no" because without the happiness, the money would essentially have no value to us at all. Then, what he said actually changed my life 'til this day. He said:
"If you wouldn't (consciously) trade your happiness to me for 70 BILLION dollars, why do you trade it everyday for something less?"
It hit me like a slap in the face and I was speechless for the first time in my life.
"Think about it. You are late for a class, get in a bit of trouble and your happiness if gone for sadness. You spill your coffee on yourself and your happiness is gone for anger. You are stuck in a traffic jam and your happiness is gone for rage. Instantaneously, without thought, you trade your happiness for the smallest of matters every single day of your life, but when I ask you the question and you consciously think about it you wouldn't trade it to me for 70 BILLION dollars."
If anything, this just elicits the extreme impact we have on our own lives. The most joyous of emotions is gone for the smallest of things. These reflections have stayed with me. Now to move ahead:
Our worlds are
self-centric. Our entire creations are a product of ours viewpoints. Our world is a product of ourselves. Now this is not to deny the incredible impact of circumstance and environment, but this is instead affirming the great control we have in understanding them. The sense of permanence we carry is the constant in our lives, devoid of circumstance and environmental effects. This 'permanence' we have is a powerful concept because it crosses theist/atheist boundaries. If we are atheist, then our permanence is our life: we are always living. If we are theist (belief in God), then the permanence is our soul-- which experiences life and
after-life, but always
experience. If we are agnostic, then permanence still exists in either case.
The quest for truth can reveal many treasures in the world, but the source is
ourselves. Goals can sought after but it is us experiencing their journeys that we feel fulfilled. Think about it: you can work your whole life, get rich and retire early. Why not? Even so, will some magic happiness moment spark in which you'll be happy the rest of your life? The truth is 'no'--it will not. Happiness and joy are emotions that have to be renewed on a constant, ongoing basis. Just because you are happy from fulfilling one goal will not guarantee your happiness on the way to the next. We are fluctuating beings and we must recreate ourselves every day.
This is one of my favourite quotes from
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"
Mountains should be climbed with as little effort as possible and without desire. The reality of your own nature should determine the speed. If you become restless, speed up. If you become winded, slow down. You climb the mountain in an equilibrium between restlessness and exhaustion. Then, when you're no longer thinking ahead, each footstep isn't just a means to an end but a unique event in itself. THIS left has jagged edges. THIS rock looks loose. From THIS place the snow is less visible, even though closer. These are things you should notice anyway. To live only for some future goal is shallow. It's the sides of the mountains which sustain life, not the top. Here's where things grow.
But, of course, without the top you can't have any sides. It's the top that DEFINES the sides. So on we go.. we have a long way... no hurry.. just one step after the next.. Mental reflection is so much more interesting than TV it's a shame people don't switch over to it. They probably think what they hear is unimportant but it never is.
So many people have said "live in the moment" that it fails to have an impact or yield a meaning anymore. I'd prefer to advice you to "enjoy your climbing."
If there is a single piece of advice, a single thing I can say I've stayed true to, it is the appreciation of life. I appreciate life. Now this can come about different ways for different people and it usually is sparked by a chain email telling you some story of how some guy died and now everyone is regretful. Now this induces real emotions, don't get me wrong, but it induces them for a temporary amount of time. The email or experience wears off and we act like it's the biggest surprise in the world when we lose something else and realize that we should have valued it while it was here. The reason the phrase "you don't know what you really got until it's gone" consistently rings true to us is because we always forget to overcome it.
Now I've been poor all my life. Poor in terms of money. My mother has raised myself and my 3 younger brothers without a dad and without child support. For the greater portion of my life, my family has lived below the legally defined 'poverty line.' I've lived in motels, I've lived in shelters and I've lived in times where we had to decide whether we eat or pay the rent. I wouldn't wish this sort of life upon anyone, but I wouldn't trade it for the world. In a story from
Zen Flesh, Zen Bones, it is said that "Poverty is your treasure. Never exchange it for an easy life," and I can feel wisdom from this statement. With all of my worse experiences combined, people still have it
wayyyyyy worse. People have had it way worse in the past and people have had it wayyyy worse in the future. And look how goddamn lucky I am, look how lucky you are. You are lucky enough to be literate, you are lucky enough to have leisure time, you are lucky enough to view this from a computer. We all have problems, but what we take for granted infinitely outweighs them.
I hope you don't have to go through poverty to appreciate a dollar. I hope you don't have someone in your family killed before you have the courage to tell your mother that you actually love her and appreciate her. I hope you don't have to be on your deathbed to realize that life has passed you by.
It is not by comparing myself to worse situations that my appreciation occurs however. It is life itself. It doesn't matter whether God created me, aliens or a biological evolutionary process, I am extremely thankful. No matter what I experience, I am able to experience it in the first place, and that is the definition of beauty to me. I get sad, I get angry, I'm optimistic, I'm cynical, I can be joyous, I can be pensive... it would be disrespectful to human nature to not admit the spectrum of emotions that we are both capable of and experience. But no matter what I feel, no matter what may happen, I am so goddamn thankful that I am here. The fact that I have this opportunity of living, this gift of life, makes me appreciative. Life is the most profound miracle that exists and we are experiencing it right now. Right NOW. Think about it. You are alive. As you are reading this, you are alive. That is amazing (to me at least).
I have goals, I have dreams, but whether I ever come to accomplish them will never determine how successful or happy I am. "Success is a journey, not a destination." I am living and I have lived--- nothing can ever take that away from me. Something that frustrates me is people who always say "you're still young, you have time," and other things of this nature. Now I am 19, but I really do not have that much time. Saying that I have a lot of time left is predicting the future, something outside of normal human capability. Not only that, but it seems like it makes it OK that I not do anything until "later." That I don't really have to embrace life now because there will be time in the future. This is a lie. The future is now. What does that mean? The past has been the present and the future will be the present. It is only in the present, in this very moment right now that
anything happens. The future is right now waiting to happen. The future only exists insofar as you deny the present. Wake up to the future.
You are going to die one day. You will cease to live. You will stop experiencing. This is one of the only certainties in life: death. So affirm your youth, say that you're young and have a lot of time left, but such efforts just downplay the truth that life is going to end. As Camus says in
The Myth of Sisyphus:
". . . during every day of an unillustrious life, time carries us. But a moment alway comes when we have to carry it. We live on the future: "tomorrow," "later on," "when you have made your way," "you will understand when you are older." Such irrelevancies are wonderful, for, after all, it's a matter of dying. Yet a day comes when a man notices or says that he is thirty. Thus he asserts his youth. But simultaneously he situates himself in relation to time. He takes his place in it. He admits that he stands at a certain point on a curve the he acknowledges having to travel to its end. He belongs to time, and by the horror that seizes him, he recognizes his worst enemy. Tomorrow, he was longing for tomorrow, whereas everything in him ought to reject it."
Why do we postpone living? Why do we not 'seize the day?' Why does the world of tomorrow hold more promise than the world of
today? Again, Camus says:
"For if there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life."
This does not have to be a source of distress, pain or depression though. Even the movie
Troy, yes, with
Brad Pitt elucidated this (as Mode observed):
"I'll tell you a secret. Something they don't teach you in your temple. The Gods envy us. They envy us because we're mortal, because any moment might be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we're doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again"
My history prof always used to say that "reality is digital but our tools are analog." Don't get confused with the distinction, it is just saying that we can never come to really know the world as it
really exists at all. This is a further observation of the claim that "All thoughts are anthropomorphic [humanized--used in human terms]." We think of everything, inherently, in relation to us. The world exists as it is with or without us though. Indeed it has existed for aeons without us yet we solely know it in
our terms. We convey it in language, something that is inherently subjective and symbolic. My Hinduism prof once said that: "Language is the discourse of relativity." Language is the mode of communication that expresses our subjective interpretations of the
same phenomenon: the world. I may never come to know the world as it is, but I still have my own world which is incredibly valuable.
So it is with these reflections in mind that I say that my advice in the past has not been wholly trivial. The thread of appreciation runs through it all. We still all aim for happiness, but we must appreciate the times that we do not have it. We all should work towards our dreams, but also enjoy the times when we aren't constructive. We waste incredible amounts of time, but it's not always bad if it's meaningful to us. Be moderate, know when you have to make a change in your life.
I try to know what I have before it's lost. I tell my friends I appreciate them at the odd times because I can imagine what it would be like without them. I tell my mom I love her for no reason at times because I recognize the great importance she has to me. I pray to God every night and thank him, if he exists, because I feel unworthy of having the opportunity of life.
I may not ever know the world as it is, but I have my own. I may not realize my dreams, but I am able to journey. I will die, this is true, but I am living now. It is in knowing my frugality that I become humble, it is in seeing my inadequacies that I gain perspective and it is in accepting death that I embrace life.
Thank you all.
-Thomas
12-02-2005, 06:53 AM
