I have thought recently (again that is) about what life is all about. IF I only live once, then what are the things I am doing right now really about? Do they have meaning or just filling space? The skills I have developed, the things I know, the experiences I have had, if it's all over when I die, what were they for?
If it's crowns in heaven, then there is a supernatural reward (or punishment) attached to all actions and even thoughts. Therefore what I do or didn't do is judged by a deity and not even myself. Although supposedly there is kind of a reckoning where the soul could look at it all and agree with the deity since the deity would always be right. That could be very depressing or uplifting depending on what we saw.
If there is reincarnation, what we do here will carry over with us-- positive and negative. Depending on your belief of whether it's a corporate or individual continuing on (corporate meaning your tribe breaks up the pieces and part of what you did might go to this one or that but not stay with you as a new individual).
Either of these beliefs that there is more to life than biology gives motivation to see your choices as either making a next life better (hopefully) or gaining crowns (whatever that means). Dust to dust means we must find a different meaning to it all-- assuming we think having one is important.
Especially where it comes to reincarnation, I think about what it'd be like to find myself again a 20-year old with the talents and insights I have today. I'd make such different choices, I think. Not to say that I wasted my life, but I knew so little in comparison to now (which means if there is reincarnation, not sure I carried much with me for this lifetime although I did have natural talents maybe that could have come from prior lives... or then again).
It's not as though at 68 I am suggesting I cannot continue to use the skills or knowledge I have gleaned from living so many years. But there are certainly less years ahead to use them. Some choices are behind me forever. With increased aging, options will begin to shrink. Abilities deteriorate. It's just reality. Not depressing because those last years do still serve purposes but the question I am asking myself now is what is the purpose of life period? This is especially true if this is all biology.
If there is one lifetime and when we die, it's over, then all we can leave behind is what we taught and inspired in those who are coming after us whether family members, friends or even strangers impacted by something that was impacted by us. Accumulating money or wealth, things, even education for ourselves, it won't matter except in that context. And the fact that we accrued wealth doesn't mean it will benefit our descendents' lives. Giving them dollars or fancy homes alone doesn't insure them better lives for it. What does if anything?
So back to what I was asking myself and Farm Boss as we drove back from a lovely family outing at Sunriver over one of the snowy Cascade passes-- What is life really all about? How do we decide one was well lived and another wasted?
One answer for me is to feel I have lived life fully, experienced what I could, done both my duty, and understood my own dream, doing the things that were possible for me. That doesn't mean a race around the earth for instance to see the 1000 things somebody else decreed everybody should see, but rather what was it that I should see which might be a microcosmic look at a pond on my own property.
A satisfying purpose to a lifetime might be keeping a set of journals that records a whole life and is burned when the person neared the end except one that was passed onto one relative (I explored the results of that in one of the stories I wrote).
The thing I was thinking about on that drive home, before photography took my mind off in a different direction is for my own life what has been its purpose and have I achieved it or is there something still out there that I missed?
Don't tell me I think too much (I've been told that all my life and if it was going to change, it likely would've years ago). Just tell me what you think life is about-- if you have also found your mind wandering that direction and maybe come up with an answer that helped you. Maybe you accepted the answer from a religion, and it works for you. I'd just like to hear what you think this life is really all about. Then, of course, comes the next question to be answered personally once one has decided on the purpose.
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
with your one wild and precious life?
from poet Mary Oliver
11 comments:
what a great post! I thought I was done, after my twenties, in asking, "What's it all about?" But no. I'm not sure there is any purpose to our human lives, other than biology. We also serve an purposes in perhaps furthering the species, both my procreation and invention.
But I don't believe there is a deity who we'll meet up with in the end. I have no clue about reincarnation. When I get to pondering the meaning of it all, I think of all the billions of souls who have inhabited this earth before us, and how, now, unless their actions were recorded somehow (cave paintings, pyramids, writings), they are lost to us and lost to all time.
I inevitably come back to the notion that I ought to keep the parameters tight and small on this question. There doesn't seem to be any meaning to our existence, but somehow that doesn't make it less important or vital to live a good life.
There is no such thing as thinking too much. People who say that are lazy is all and so can't relate.
I'm afraid I've been a bit of a fatalist lately. At the same time, I think we have to act as if we have a choice and live under that illusion. It keeps us sane. For the moment, I really don't think there is good and evil and believe there is no such thing as a wasted life.
I don't think there is any meaning to life, other than we are here and to do and be the best we can. I don't think there is an afterlife, I think there is just this one and beautiful life. There is a sadness that came with our consciousness, one that recognizes our mortality. We've made up a million stories to appease that pain, but in the end, there really is a last breath of this one and beautiful life.
Rain--Count me in the column of those who think that our only purpose is to fulfill the imperative to reproduce - to continue the string of life.
Cop Car
Well what I was trying to say here, and maybe not well, is that there can be meaning to life and meaning to our days. It doesn't require a god or someone else to give that to us. It's what we give it by how we live. To use the word meaning often seems to imply a greater purpose but I am not using it just that way (although would like to hear from those who might be they would).
I see it as possible for us to put purpose and meaning to our lives and there be no deity at all, no divine plan. The thing is those days are ours. What do we do with them? To live with purpose is different than to think haphazardly we can do whatever we want with no concern of even daily consequences for the day after tomorrow. I think one can live that way and some do. I'd like to hear from that view also in that maybe they live totally for pleasure with no concern beyond that. Epicurus thought that way and made a philosophy out of it.
As to whether or not there is an all powerful God, I don't know but it seems doubtful. It is a wonderful idea and probably has calmed the masses over the years.
I do know that I have been happier once I recognized that there are basically two types of things available to average people- things you can do with money and things you can do with time. When I finally decided that I could live with the money I had but the time left in my hour glass was running out, things I could do with time became more important to me than continuing to work for more dollars, so I retired.
As to reincarnation, I think the closest I'll come to that is my children and grand children, etc. will continue after me. Some will remember me, some will not but I guess it would be accurate to say that for at least the first couple of generations, I did have an effect on who they are.
If my children remember me, I will have left a legacy.
I think about leaving them less stuff than what my folks left me.
Somedays I think it is all about recycling paper - stewardship of the environment so someday our children's children down the line will figure it all out.
In the end, a lot of what we do is just plain luck; both good and bad. I look back on my life and if I'm honest I probably wouldn't have done things differently given the circumstances at that time.
I just muddle through as best I can, trying to not hurt anyone or to do ill and hope that I am of some comfort to my children when they need it.
I hope that I have shown by example that to be honest and upright is the path to follow.
The only legacy I am leaving is in the children I have raised and nurtured. And that is my meaning for my life.
I fall back on something that my wife said: "The quality of one's life is directly proportional to the quality of one's relationships." That provides all the meaning I need.
As far as reincarnation... Were there such a thing (which there is no evidence) than I won the goddam lottery in this life. The probability that I would be born a second time as a white middle-class child in the US again rather than a poor, under undernourished, child in an underdeveloped country is statistically significant. I sure hope it's not true.
Your writing in this post resonated with me. At almost 62 I'm feeling like an adolescent again in raising the "What is the meaning of life, my life?" questions. I am learning how to blog, so that I can have a conversation with myself, and hopefully others, about these questions. Also, regarding your comment on journals: I am burning some old journals, and saving others. My timing is influenced by my 90 year old father who just went through all my recently deceased mother's love letters from her boyfriends in the late 1930's and early 40's. He's had a wonderful time and is having them typed up for the family. They were married for 67 years and it is like he is discovering new things about her.
Thank you for the interesting comment, Helena. Welcome to blogging.
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