Working Answer to Meaning of Life: Personal Progression
After leaving college for the second time about 20 years ago, I found myself loving the big metaphysical questions like, "Why am I here," "How do I know what's real," "the general/universal What's going on" and the ever popularized "What is the meaning of life."
First I want to note that I NEVER feel that I've fully answered any of these questions. There is always something to challenge or flat out supersede my best ideas and don't want to stifle possibilities by ever thinking I had a FULL answer on these topics. So I decided to only use the phrases best ideas or working answers when discussing what I had come up with.
My first working answer revolved around happiness, which I'd assume many other people's did/do as well. To me it only made sense, the meaning of life is to have a happy life. It feels good and rewarding to be enjoying myself and basking in the joy of others. Essentially, at the time, this tied together happiness and meaning for me.
A couple of years later I realized that I needed to revisit this working answer. My issue was that I had realized a couple of things:
- It's impossible to be happy all of the time. I had to recognize the anti-happy/bad times as well as their value, even though un-enjoyable to go through.
- Happiness is like temperature, we feel it only in reference to our current state. We acclimate to hot or cold after a short amount of time...same thing with happiness. It's really just a gauge compared to where we were prior. So even if we were happy all the time, it would quickly normalize, leaving us requiring more or new happiness.
This may seem like a minor thing it had shattered my best idea of meaning of life apart. I accepted that negative things happen in life and sought a way to transcend the happiness scale. While it's never enjoyable to go through at the time, there was usually a useful takeaway when reflecting back on a 'bad' time or situation. Sometimes the utilitarian takeaway is a new analysis to prevent it from occurring again, a completely new view point on how something could be approached, or something else deemed useful.
I realized that every bad situation that I found I had created a USE from suddenly seemed worthwhile! Think of all the hardships you have gotten through just to come out a stronger or better person. This was the piece I still run with today.
Now my working answer to "What is the meaning of life" is generalized to Personal Progression.
Hopefully nobody is the same person they were in high school or a child. The goal here is making BOTH the positive AND negative times USEFUL such that you are a better, stronger, more caring (or whatever) person than you were before. Our only true metric is relative to our-self!
Image Sources:
Cat-Lion Mirror
Happiness
Happy and Sad Faces
Earth and Butterfly
Maybe the meaning of life is not just being happy, but actually seeking happiness. What are you doing every day to find some small bit of joy? What are you doing to help someone else find joy... because happiness is richer when it is shared with someone.
Are you "living after the manner of happiness"? Are you doing things that will degrade you or someone else? Or are you asking the big questions, sharing love, enriching the world? It is when we seek after happiness, and find joy even in hardship, that we grow and really live. If we just expect to be happy with no effort, that happiness diminishes and we find ourselves filled with disappointment.
Great post, as always!
Great comment and you hit the nail on the head!
I couldn't say this better myself! :)
I think there are different kinds of happiness. We all know the one you mentioned, but I think there is a deeper one which doesn't need this escalation. In a sense it is sustainable. I can't say I have reached such a state, but I think I might have glimpsed it. Bytemaster touches this topic in his last post:
https://steemit.com/philosophy/@dantheman/why-do-we-fight-to-change-the-world
I can agree on the different kinds of happiness. The one I ran on years back, which this post in referencing, is more of the short term feeling of happiness, like the rush of gratification. Which is somewhat like a deficiency need, that needs to be 'refilled' or 'bumped' periodically. I see this one more in the 'in the moment' scope of things.
The more sustainable one I view more as general contentment with self, place in life, long standing relationships (that have reached unconditional love), etc. Which I'll agree, continuously builds up (ideally) through our life. I view this more in the sense of 'holistic' happiness, looking back on experiences good or bad, that got me to where I am currently. This holistic approach is what I was trying to speak to with making 'use' of previous events, good or bad. (Some of this was my semantics with the word happiness, I didn't want to make it too philosophical/hard to read. But I absolutely agree in the distinction you mentioned.
Dan spoke to this beautifully in that post! I took what he said in the sense of first, removing labels of what things 'should be' to allow more focus on the Be Here Now/in the moment sense of having enough knowledge of the self feel that we're going in the right direction. To me this is the blending of the flow or being in the moment with the conscious thought of ideals to create the direction.
I look forward the future of a community of individuals, not just a group-think of people that are content with the "it's always been that way" excuse. Just having a revolutionary technological and economic frame work (which I still find to be amazing) is a huge step, now we need it to, ideally, be filled with those who have enlightened self-interest. The opportunities are there for those who grab it. :)
Great read! It would be nice to never have the lows in life, until you think about it, and without the lows there would be no highs, just a constant state of somthing in between.
Thank you and exactly!
You said it beautifully! :)
Be Happy and Grow! :-)
Hehe, both is ideal!
The meaning of life, the universal question and almost related to happiness. What is happiness? Questioning the unknown. We all try to find our identity in this world and I believe figuring out your identity will ultimately give you the answers to life and happiness. It is something beyond knowledge, like time. Time has a a lot of the answers.
Well said! :)
I like that :)
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