Finding meaning in the course
It’s often said that you should “choose a life that makes you happy”. I think that’s the easy thing to say. I also think it’s the popular thing to say. People throw around phrases like “everything happens for a reason” without understanding what any of it means. This is lazy, but many of these pithy responses are fleeting moments of comfort through self-illusion to resolve an existing conflict or contradiction that would otherwise potentially cause inner-turmoil to the way they conceptualize the world if taken seriously. Many people are not intellectually ready or capable to deal with that. I wish that weren’t the case but it sadly is.
There’s a massive confusion that lies on the underbelly of our culture, and it’s that people often mistake happiness for having a comfortable or unnecessarily simplistic or easy life. What I think people ought to instead look for is meaning in the course.
—I write incessantly about this for good reason—
There are many ways to feel happy, and therefore it follows that there are some “happiness-es” greater than others. It’s one’s responsibility to find that which is highest, and it nearly feels intuitive to say that it’s that which is embroidered with meaningful activity, almost by definition. Why would it be any other way?
An important thing to point out is that happiness is not a state of being, it’s an emotion. Emotions are experienced from seconds to minutes. Using the word “meaning” is more like what people try to mean when they use the word “happiness”—it’s more akin to a state of being, which is a long-term feeling that I would describe as a deep satisfaction with one’s life, that entails being proud of what you’ve accomplished, what you’re currently working on, and what you will accomplish in the future, and to have those three components come together in harmony. Now that we understand that the usage of the word is an unfortunate, popularly uncareful use of language, we can understand that the question “are you happy?” is a nonsensical one. I’m happy because I just had an egg omelet with a coffee, but it doesn’t bring any meaning into my life.
The anatomy of a meaningful [life] goal should take the following characteristics:
1) It should be a sufficiently difficult thing to accomplish, to the point where you’re doubtful that it’s even possible given everything goes perfectly, because if your ability is at level ‘x’ and the goal requires a much higher ability of level ‘y’, then the space in between is where you will grow as a person—the pursuit should stretch you as an individual. And of course, this is understood in light of the fact that life is not the destination but the journey. It’s finding meaning in the course.
2) It should be aimed at helping as many people as possible: if you do things only for yourself, then you’re missing the point of the entire experience. People have a remarkable ability to let themselves down, but feel greatly uncomfortable letting others down. When people depend on you, it changes the psychology of your performance entirely.
3) It should be something that can be expressed within a sentence, and understandable to anyone who hears it—even children. Why? Because the idea of the ultimate goal being easy to understand is for your own clarity. Yet, the steps required to get there will be complicated, so there will be much to keep you busy in orienting yourself through the winding road, and therefore allow spending less time on things that don’t matter at all. Think of it as a personal mission statement, which would serve as a response to the question “why do you wake up in the morning?”.
4) It should be wholly engaging. This goes without saying.
5) It should align (or at least not violently contradict) with the other dimensions of your life. There are limitless ways to orient a life, so usually this is not an issue at all, given the persistent existence of clever solutions to even the most seemingly rigid logistical challenges. However, if you’re 45 and you have a 6 year old running around, it’s probably not the wisest move to invest the 200k you have on that startup you always wanted to run at the risk of destabilizing your financial life, because your kid kind of needs you, man. Risk management is important, so you would have to take a safer, albeit longer road to accomplish the same thing.
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What are these “dimensions”? Well, admittedly, there are many ways to group them, but one way you can conceptualize them is like this (in no particular order):
Personal psychology & mental health
Work & professional life
Financial well-being
Family life
Intimate relationships
Friendship circles
The best way to assess the status of these dimensions is to ask yourself a myriad of questions, because questions are one of the most useful mental tools we have at our disposal. Ask questions questions questions. With [good] questions, you get useful information, and you gain a deeper understanding of yourself and your life. The information you get from these questions allow you to regroup, reorient, and take action.
Some simple examples:
Does anyone care if you're alive or dead?
Do you have any friends?
Do you have people that love you?
Do you have an intimate relationship that works?
Do you have a strong networked family?
Do you have an interesting occupation that regularizes your schedule, gives you something productive to do on a long-term basis?
Do you have any room for advancement in the future?
Are you as educated as you are intelligent? (you should be, otherwise it’s just a waste of time, resources, and opportunity)
Do you have a hobby outside of work that is engaging? > One important caveat here: there’s nothing wrong with taking up a hobby like photography or chess or drawing, because if you have the main mission in mind after you’ve taken the time and put in the work to ask yourself the tough questions that allow you to understand the reason why you wake up in the morning, then hobbies serve to widen you as a person and make you a more interesting and learned individual. However, if you don’t understand what your main mission is, if you don’t “keep the main thing mainly the main thing” as Stephen R. Covey says in his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, then hobbies become a waste of time and actually serve as a distraction. (Life is not a series of hobbies to pass the time until you die). -
Are you compromising your mental or physical health by doing things that are stupid?
One should probably get the above starter baseline questions in order before they can ask themselves the more complicated and nuanced questions about their family, work, finances, etc.
All of this is vitally important.
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Even with all this established, it’s still worth the time to point out that it’s a grand privilege beyond belief to think philosophically about things given how much poverty, war, religious oppression, and strife there still is in the modern age, yet for those who find it as an option to do so, you will find that it will not even occur to most people to propose it as an activity for serious consideration. How depressing, though I think it’s always been this way given how populations are stratified within a bell curve. You need a certain mix of creativity, curiosity, and aptitude to find this kind of educational exercise as attractive.
The implication of course is that for some, the blindness may be inescapable. It’s in reference to those who might never in their life understand they even had a decision they could make—they have absolutely no idea whatsoever on what they’ve missed.
There exists another sub-section of the population that are just capable enough to understand the concepts and the gravity of the question, but don’t take it upon themselves to search for answers simply because they were never presented with it as a set of ideas to ponder in the first place—they didn’t know what they didn’t know, and that’s [probably] not their fault. That’s what good authors are for, and we would have to rely on those with influence to spread these ideas to the point where it becomes generally known. In our personal lives, we ought to discuss these ideas when permissible given their level of importance.
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And finally, for those who find themselves unconvinced and attached to their linguistically misguided ideas of happiness, despite all evidence to the contrary, understand that although it’s an illusion to justify your place in the world merely by the dumb idea that you’re happy at the present moment (or at the very least not weighed by sadness), if you do look for that which is meaningful, happiness will always manifest itself as a pleasant side effect.
