My answer to why live: I have never wanted to take my own life, even in the depths of my pain. Somehow, I always believed that things could get better. There's an optimist within me underneath it all.
But that hasn't stopped me from feeling a lot of despair at times. At one point, I remember specifically, I was pondering my death, and the resulting ending of all my projects - everything that was important to me would cease. A part of me wanted to live forever, and if I couldn't have that, nothing seemed worthwhile - especially, as Brigitte said, if you are in pain in addition to not having purpose, it looks pretty bad.
I was standing in the back yard, I remember, trying to do some yardwork, and disgusted with how pointless it all was, everything. A hundred years from now, nothing I could do would matter one iota. I decided to stop fighting it and just give in. Okay, it's all meaningless. And suddenly, I went from frantically having to do all these things to achieve my goals, to realizing I don't have to do anything. I could do anything I want, and it didn't matter. Instead of wanting to die, I felt a tremendous burden lifted. I could work on my back yard now because it didn't matter what I did. It was boring to just sit down. And there was some pleasure I got from meaninglessly rearranging the stones around the garden. It pleased me. But it didn't have to mean anything any more. I didn't have to have a purpose - I could do it from pure pleasure.
When I went through my clinical depression several years back, the worst part of it for me was the inability to feel pleasure. I remember walking outside on a beautiful day with a light breeze on my arms, and dully remembering, oh, yeah, this is the kind of day that gives people pleasure. But the sensation was painful to me.
Since then, I have rediscovered joy in doing things just for the experience, and not for any purpose. To be sure, I still do a lot of things with a goal in mind - retirement, better health, plans for my son, etc. But often, now, I remember that all those goals are actually just nice "what if's". I might build up a beautiful retirement and get flattened by a truck going to pick up my first check. Planning on the future is always a risky thing, especially when it comes to waiting for something to happen before you can be happy. Now, there are many times in my weekly life when I just enjoy a moment, or a person, or a sensation, or a thought, and it doesn't have to fulfill any goal or solve world hunger to be worthwhile.
So, my answer is that even if I have no goals, there is enough enjoyable in life to make it worth going on. Most of my misery I create myself by demanding things of the universe that it can't deliver, or demanding that the past be different than it is, or demanding that the future meet my expectations, or demanding that people be different than they are. I find it hard to let go of my demands of the universe and of people, but when I can, I start to notice the things life gives me freely without any urging of my own. It's a matter of flowing in the same direction as life around me instead of swimming upstream all the time.
I still believe there is a Purpose, beyond my small goals and plans - a grand Purpose for why we are here - but that is theory, and still hard for me to grasp with any certainty. I feel like it gets a bit clearer the more I am clear about myself.
Monday, August 23, 2004
Saturday, August 14, 2004
Thoughts on the End of Life
It's my belief that just as everything living has its time to live, and it's time to pass on, so I believe that the human race only has so many years to flourish in the universe.
I don't believe we are destined to expand forever, living in other solar systems, spreading throughout the universe forever. We know, to the best of scientific opinion, that the sun will burn out in around 5 billion years - and even if the human race could escape that, there is the eventual collapse of the universe back into its pre-big bang state, or some other form not compatible to the delicate conditions we need to survive.
If that doesn't convince you, consider that humans have been around for about 5 million years, or 5,000 millennia. Within the last 10th of the last one millennium out of those 5,000 millennia, we have harnessed electricity and traveled to other planets, created the atomic bomb, threatened our atmosphere and our water supplies. We have created enough nuclear materials to wipe out all life on the earth thousands of times over, and have created chemical weapons potent enough for a thimble full to wipe out a nation. Yet it is fairly obvious that human nature has not evolved as quickly as our technology - we easily fall into believing the much of the human race must be destroyed, and we are often willing to destroy ourselves as well rather than let our enemy survive. Humans do not seem a likely candidate to handle the powers that science have put in our hands. What are our realistic chances of making it through the next 1,000 years, let alone a few million?
And if I believe the human race will end some day, whether near or far, for me it changes everything. When we as individuals reach an age where we understand on a deep level that we will die, and we only have so many years to live, our focus shifts from merely staying alive, to figuring out what to do with the precious amount of time we have left. It is not a matter of doing the most we can; it is a matter of finding some meaning to our lives, some meaning for having wandered around on this earth for so many years during this brief flash of glory, whether long or short, before we lie down with the rest of the people and animals and quietly decompose beneath the earth.
So what of the human race? If it is not our destiny to forever expand and grow in power and glory, if some day the planets will be quiet and cold, and nothing stir except the grinding of platonic slates under gravitational pull, then what is our purpose? Imagine we are sitting somewhere, looking back on the still universe, asking ourselves, what was that all about anyway? What was the purpose of our brief 5 million years, scurrying around like it really matters whether a certain president gets elected or if we land that new job? Going back to the first bit of life in the primordial soup, what was this strange journey of carbon-based life forms, multiplying until it reaches an awareness and intelligence capable of destroying the planet that gave it birth? What was it all about?
I believe it was Charlie Chapman who, when told there was no life on other planets, said, "I feel lonely." When I contemplate our mortality, I feel sad, even though I will probably live another 30 years and experience many wonderful things in life. For some reason, we humans are not happy without a purpose, without something to make sense of it all. And that is our glory as humans as well as our burden - the animals are not awake enough to feel the angst we feel.
Our looming death forces us to seek deeper, to stretch our inner powers to the max, to seek a relationship with the universe, before it is gone from us, and we from it. This is where spirituality steps in - to answer the despair left to us by science and reason, to create purpose where there is none, to let us find our home at last - a journey I have personally only begun to take.
I don't believe we are destined to expand forever, living in other solar systems, spreading throughout the universe forever. We know, to the best of scientific opinion, that the sun will burn out in around 5 billion years - and even if the human race could escape that, there is the eventual collapse of the universe back into its pre-big bang state, or some other form not compatible to the delicate conditions we need to survive.
If that doesn't convince you, consider that humans have been around for about 5 million years, or 5,000 millennia. Within the last 10th of the last one millennium out of those 5,000 millennia, we have harnessed electricity and traveled to other planets, created the atomic bomb, threatened our atmosphere and our water supplies. We have created enough nuclear materials to wipe out all life on the earth thousands of times over, and have created chemical weapons potent enough for a thimble full to wipe out a nation. Yet it is fairly obvious that human nature has not evolved as quickly as our technology - we easily fall into believing the much of the human race must be destroyed, and we are often willing to destroy ourselves as well rather than let our enemy survive. Humans do not seem a likely candidate to handle the powers that science have put in our hands. What are our realistic chances of making it through the next 1,000 years, let alone a few million?
And if I believe the human race will end some day, whether near or far, for me it changes everything. When we as individuals reach an age where we understand on a deep level that we will die, and we only have so many years to live, our focus shifts from merely staying alive, to figuring out what to do with the precious amount of time we have left. It is not a matter of doing the most we can; it is a matter of finding some meaning to our lives, some meaning for having wandered around on this earth for so many years during this brief flash of glory, whether long or short, before we lie down with the rest of the people and animals and quietly decompose beneath the earth.
So what of the human race? If it is not our destiny to forever expand and grow in power and glory, if some day the planets will be quiet and cold, and nothing stir except the grinding of platonic slates under gravitational pull, then what is our purpose? Imagine we are sitting somewhere, looking back on the still universe, asking ourselves, what was that all about anyway? What was the purpose of our brief 5 million years, scurrying around like it really matters whether a certain president gets elected or if we land that new job? Going back to the first bit of life in the primordial soup, what was this strange journey of carbon-based life forms, multiplying until it reaches an awareness and intelligence capable of destroying the planet that gave it birth? What was it all about?
I believe it was Charlie Chapman who, when told there was no life on other planets, said, "I feel lonely." When I contemplate our mortality, I feel sad, even though I will probably live another 30 years and experience many wonderful things in life. For some reason, we humans are not happy without a purpose, without something to make sense of it all. And that is our glory as humans as well as our burden - the animals are not awake enough to feel the angst we feel.
Our looming death forces us to seek deeper, to stretch our inner powers to the max, to seek a relationship with the universe, before it is gone from us, and we from it. This is where spirituality steps in - to answer the despair left to us by science and reason, to create purpose where there is none, to let us find our home at last - a journey I have personally only begun to take.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)