Purpose; A Question? – Toby C
This is something that interests me to a great extent. This theme as such is something that consumes me. It’s quite debilitating to feel so weighed down by something so impossible to solve, and as quite a logical thinker that’s where my downfall comes into play, trying to make sense of something that is completely illogical. What I am writing about today is about is life. I would say the meaning of life but as you will hear in a second, I have some conflicting views about that. In order for you to understand my views, my ideas and ultimately my solutions to big questions with no answers, I want to give you a bit of background so you can understand how I have reached my conclusions.
Firstly, I think the main realisation I had recently is that everyone views the world in different ways, and therefore have different views and opinions on purpose. For some people it is easy, particularly, I would say, for people who choose to follow a religion. It is very easy in life to have a purpose and feel a sense of belonging if you believe that there is a divine being watching over you and that when you die you have something better to look forward to than absolutely nothing, even if the alternative is heaven or hell.
From as long as I can remember I have been an atheist. So, for me, there goes the easy solution to purpose. Unfortunately, you can’t force yourself to believe in a religion, so as hard as I once tried, and believe me I tried, you can’t blindly follow something you inherently think doesn’t exist.
Once you have lost religion, purpose and meaning in life are much harder to grasp. Your next best hope I would say is ignorance, this involves blindly doing whatever you do without thinking about it. You know, get a job have a family, go to Spain once every two years, access your pension, die. If you can do that without thinking lucky you!
Unfortunately for a lot of people the pesky question “why” creeps into their minds a lot. It’s really hard to do anything when you think that everything will die, including the planet, and that our ability to think and work and invent stupid things like money is an accident of evolution and everything in the universe is utterly pointless.
Having thoughts like that make it very difficult to get on with day-to-day life, so from a young age I have tried my own ways to cope with the pointlessness of life. Like I said, I tried out religion, that didn’t work. The next thing I tried, which I have written about before, was my own philosophy as such called the “paradox of pointlessness”, this at its core was the simple idea that if no meaning in life is set out for you, no fate or anything, then you have the power to pick your own purpose, and for a while that idea was incredibly liberating for me, until it stopped working.
It’s quite hard to explain, but I guess just as with religion, I lost my faith in the idea. It really worked for me for most of my time at RHS, and I gave talks about it in English and just to anyone who would listen, but slowly it began to creep into my mind that I was just pulling the wool over my eyes, that you can pick your own purpose but ultimately that’s still useless when every single purpose you could pick is ultimately pointless.
That idea is quite a strange one to grasp if you haven’t had it, but I will take you through the sort of thoughts I would have. At the moment I am thinking about what I want to do when I grow up, and briefly I thought about medicine. But that’s a stupid idea because why should you work to save people whoever you save will just die anyway? I know that’s incredibly morbid but there is truth to it. Can I just put a disclaimer that I think healthcare is incredibly valuable and I’m so glad some people find purpose in it; I mean I wouldn’t be alive without doctors but personally I can’t find purpose in being a doctor myself. Okay I should become a stockbroker then – well no because money is completely fictitious and its proven it doesn’t make you happier so why would I pursue a career that is based around collective imagination and belief of something which isn’t real? Okay okay I got the answer – I will get married and have children. Um no thanks… that’s quite a lot of faf for school runs and cleaning up sick.Its all pointless, that’s the problem, and no paradox to solve it this time. So, what does that leave me? Unfortunately, it leaves me nothing, if I stick to my original coping mechanism of the paradox idea.
How do you conquer the unconquerable? I think the answer is to adopt whatever ideas help you at the time to get through life. Yes, the paradox of pointlessness worked for me, but it doesn’t anymore. So how am I able to write a bubble article and… not want to cry?
The answer is because I have adopted a new philosophy which is working for me now. And this one is O so simple. No big words, no paradoxes. I actually stole it off Jimmy Carr, and although a slightly controversial comedian he does has some very interesting thoughts on life. And so, what’s the answer? Well at least for me at the moment, the answer is simply to enjoy the passage of time. Enjoy the passage of time. Forget everything else, don’t be blind to the big questions but don’t fret over them. With that in mind I would be happy as a father, I would enjoy my very finite time on a pointless planet working in science. So that’s what I am going to do.
Enjoy the passage of time
This very simple ideology is working for me now, but knowing me it won’t last forever, but that’s okay. The biggest realisation I have had is that you have to be ready to jump ship, I want to be happy in life, and I am at the moment, but who knows, in order to find purpose in 10 years’ time I might become monk, or a shaman, or maybe saving lives as a doctor after all. I will do whatever I ned to in order to be happy and have meaning, right now I am lucky because I can derive meaning from enjoying my life which is brilliant, and I will love that as my purpose until I need to change it.
One day I hope someone finds a real answer, not the wishy-washy crap that I have been writing about. Who knows, maybe one day my purpose will be to find a real purpose, but until then the wishy-washy crap will do just fine for me, and it will keep me happy, and it will keep me smiling. And when you see me in 10 years’ time, even if I am in orange robes with a shaved head, if I am still happy and smiling then, well maybe, just maybe I am onto something now.
Post Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.