Give to Take more

 It has been more than one year since I have written my last post. Now that I have been married and have my own family now, my creative energies have been placed on the backburner. There re much more different priorities and it set me thinking on one issue and that is: why do we exist?

It is a big question for everyone but I am like everyone else has been evolving everyday. We seek meaning in our lives everyday, everyday that we lived aimlessly is a life lived wasted. So let us talk about what life is about and what does meaning means to everyone of us. Lastly how we can lead a meaningful life.

Let us talk in first person now, life is not just about Maslow's hierarchy of needs where first seek to fulfill our basic needs before seeking self-actualization eventually. Long are the days where our life is " short, brutish and nasty." Though there are of some of us who actually have problems meeting our basic meets, even in the developing world, hunger and thirst are quite rare with rapid production of food to meet the world's food needs. 

What we want in life is life lived in colour and not in black and white. We seek friends and family to catch up. We work in jobs that requires us to expand our mental capacity and not just done in rote. Ultimately what we want in life is a life that is "lived" and not "lived". We live in the now and not in the past or in the future and definitely not vicariously.

Meaning in this sense, means to be social, to be creative and to be in a community. We look for connections and look for feedback on how to live a "good" life. Another loaded word. On what is a good life, is we are at one with the community and the community is at one with you.

For myself, I seek meaning through seeking the truth. I am curious about how the world works and how to crack the code on how to live a "good" life. I am at one with the community because it gives me a feedback on to lead a "good life" and I can contribute to this community further. When the community thrive, I thrive with it as well. Likewise, when I thrive, the community thrives as well because I can contribute and form a virtuous cycle. Meaning comes in the form of all the social bonds that I forged while I work towards this "good life".

The "good life" is not just about giving, it is also about taking. It is about giving so that we can take more. The ego cannot survive without the "ideal/superego" and "infantile desires" working in tandem.

Some see this as a tension, I see this as a virtuous cycle. We wish to have more but we are blunted by our selfless streak. This is not a choice between the two but a counterpoint played against one another to play a piece of beautiful music.

Earlier in the post, I wrote that I can be prescriptive on how to live a meaningful life. I lied and that is the whole point. Had I not enticed you to read on, would you have continued to read on. Now having read this short post, do you know how to lead a meaningful live. I bet you do now.

Merry Christmas.

Eugene