We have evolved through the ranks of our ancestors,
outsmarting the predators of the world, developing
systems of
material and nutritional exchange, creating
health practices and
building incomprehensibly advanced technologies
to facilitate
longevity, safety and efficiency. We have
reached the top of
this world, and yet, a great many of us see
nothing from it.
As our awareness has progressed alongside
everything else,
we have found ourselves outgrowing more comfortable,
shortsighted narratives of life and moving
into a realm in which
there appears to be no clear narrative or
reason at all, but
rather, an absurdity and meaninglessness underpinning
everything. This is perhaps one of, if not
the greatest
contemporary issues of humankind. Finding
motivation and a sense
of meaning in a period of time in which existence
has revealed
to be, or at least revealed to appear to be,
meaningless.
Arguably, motivation to live and live meaningfully
cannot
be founded on the idea that life is a universally
meaningful or
ultimately resolvable thing, if one finds
that, at its core, it
isn’t. Motivation, rather, must go beneath
the banal clichés of
traditional ideals of happiness, success,
and grand meaning and
address the very real, bleak nature of our
reality.
There is in fact no one size-fits-all prescription
or
cheat-sheet or instruction manual to life.
And there is likely
no ultimate circumstance, idea, or thing that
will make life’s
uncertainty, pain, and chaos go away. Realizing
and accepting
this is likely the first step. Only then can
we consider what
might actually be real and enduring.
In his novel, Breakfast of Champions, American
author, Kurt
Vonnegut writes about an imaginary conversation
between two
yeast cells. He writes, “They were discussing
the possible
purposes of life as they ate sugar and suffocated
in their own
excrement. Because of their limited intelligence,
they never
came close to guessing that they were making
champagne." In this
little allegory, Vonnegut alludes to the idea
that with a
limited intelligence, like our own, comes
a limited ability to
see the larger picture of which we are truly
a part of. In this
metaphor, the yeast cells are making champagne,
something
relatively insignificant, but rather nice
nonetheless, which is
perhaps a pleasant thought. However, by the
same token, it could
also be something not so nice. The point is,
we are all, in
essence, merely passengers to this thing and
don’t know what we
are working towards or why or if it is even
any good for us or
about us. We could all be aggressively and
competitively working
towards something worse than this, or indifferent
to us. Or
perhaps not. The only real, honest conclusion
is that we don’t
know.
At first, this idea of not knowing what we
are all doing
might make things feel absurd and meaningless,
and that’s fair.
However, the following step is to perhaps
realize that this
permits us to no longer be subservient to
some specific grand
meaning or template of life. That we don’t
have to, nor should
we expect to discover or join in on someone
else’s ultimate
answer or way of living, nor attend to some
future ideal or
afterlife, but rather, live based on what
we can do and know
right now. To attempt to follow our own barometers
of meaning
and believe in the only thing we have any
evidence to believe in
at all, our self and its relationship with
this little sliver of
time and space.
Some of the greatest minds in history have
believed and
empirically found that we appear to all have
layers or processes
of the self that, if circumstances are sufficient
and effort is
directed towards it, can lead to a true or
higher self. A self-
realization of personal purpose and meaning.
This idea was
proposed by popular psychologist Abraham Maslow
in his pyramid
of needs, which is a 5 tier pyramid diagram
that illustrates the
order and balance of human needs, starting
at material and
physiological needs, like food, water and
safety, and then
moving into psychological needs like love
and esteem, and then
finally into what Maslow coined as self-actualization,
or living
according to one’s true self and their full
potential. Somewhat
similarly, this was also eluded to by renowned
psychologist,
Carl Jung with his concept of indivuation,
which suggests that
there is a ring of outer layers surrounding
our true self,
consisting of our outward, artificial social
personas, our
unconscious hidden layers, being what Jung
referred to as our
shadows and animus/anima, and then a core,
true self buried
underneath it all, which, when one goes through
the process of
uncovering and realizing it into conscious
expression, a sense
of completeness, harmony, and vitality is
experienced. These
concepts, along with others unmentioned, suggest
that we each
have a sort of core self and source of meaning
and interest.
Things we actually want and should do with
our life. None of
which have much to do with happiness or perfection
or fame or
wealth or anything of the sort. The thing
we are motivated by,
therefor, must not be merely to impress others,
nor achieve
anything according to any societal ideals,
fore everyone has
their own unique, complicated source of motivation
that leads to
distinctive outputs of meaning and feelings
that feeling is
worth feeling at all. There are certainly
shared, common ideas
and methods of life worth considering, but
one must attempt to
take the input of information, and consider
critically how it
might reflect on themselves, before assuming
it.
The mass of disillusioned individuals that
are in
circumstances that could permit them to perhaps
be otherwise,
are likely not so because life is meaningless,
but because they
willingly let themselves be pulled from their
own, distracted
and tempted by the idea that somehow, through
enough surplus
money and stuff and achievement of this and
that according to
other people’s ideas and constructions,
life could be made
completely happy and perfect and certain.
However, no matter
what one does, no one can do this. What one
can seem to do,
however, is follow, discover, and create a
personal
meaningfulness out of the absurdity and chaos
that endures that
fact that life can never be such a thing.
The acceptance and realization of one’s
self and the
creation of personal meaning is unfathomably
difficult to
process and understand, let alone do. It is
perhaps the true
challenge of modern human existence. However,
it is perhaps the
only worthy, possible one. An arduous process
one must work and
fight for unto the lights go out.
We are all incredibly strange, scared and
some amount
dissolute, even the kindest and most charismatic
person in the
world, at a close enough distance. And from
a far enough
distance, none of us matter at all. And so,
however cliché it
may be, we really are all in this thing together,
whatever it
is. We all need each other’s words, and
music, and art, and
ideas, and hands of effort, and eyes of honesty
to help us
through it. Not because life is some perfect,
happy, easy,
winnable thing. Not because anyone knows what
they are doing or
what’s going on. But because it isn’t
and because we don’t.
We are perhaps the only stop on this evolutionary
train
that is outside the tunnel of darkness, able
to take the
material of everything and make it into something
beautiful or
helpful or interesting. To understand and
create what meaning
can even truly mean. And to do so just because
we can. Because
the universe, for some reason, gave us a blank
page to write on.
