The days go by so incredibly fast during quarantine. I’m amazed how quickly the week goes. The weekend is over before it starts. This got me thinking about how I spend my time, and why. What’s the purpose?
One thing I’ve come to accept is that life is about doing things. Doing difficult things. Doing new things. Learning and applying. Growing. Getting wiser. Development, passing on knowledge, passing away. This need to express our thoughts in action is apparent on a day of not doing much at all and feeling crappy at the end of it.
It seems like we have an innate need to make some kind of mark on the world so that all this effort means something more than avoidance of soul crushing boredom. What one leaves behind can be anything - kids, art, legislature, whatever — just something that effects others. Something that exists outside ourselves and has some relevance and impact; ideally still existing post mortem.
This is an idea related in Plato’s Symposium1 where Socrates claims
this is the character of their love; their offspring, as they hope, will preserve their memory and giving them the blessedness and immortality which they desire in the future.
But one’s accomplishments cannot give life ultimate meaning. Not on the level that a deeply religious person finds innate meaning in life. Percy Shelley's poem Ozymandias2 elucidates this point; showing how even the most impactful individual is eventually forgotten and his empire buried. Pride appears foolish from the distance of a thousand years.
‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Once you extend the time frame long enough, all of human existence ceases to have meaning. Which begs the question, what chance does a single person have of doing anything worthwhile? The fact is, if you focus on how fleeting life is, it is easy to lose that sense of purpose essential to finding motivation in the day to day.
However, if committed to rejecting religion’s nicely packaged ultimate meaning, then how can this nihilistic outlook be avoided? Is it necessary to believe something unprovable in order to have meaning be injected into one’s world view. For example, by choosing to believe that humanity is inherently important, then right away what you do matters. From that standpoint, improving the life of others through good deeds is a reasonable life goal. This outlook fulfills the need to leave a mark on the world whilst experiencing the natural social satisfaction of helping others.
Something I underlined in Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway:
live as if what you do matters; it does; a lot! 3
Key phrase being “as if”. It is an example of the point I’m trying to make: that this is a choice. Not a result of rationale. Relying on rationality seems to mislead us here.
Another idea - maybe the reliance on a leap of faith can be avoided by finding meaning in pursuit of objective truth. Truth exists in its own right. Discovering a truth is a form of unity with the universe; immortality in the embodiment something unalterable.
In the end, it may seem preferable to just ignore the thought of death and transience altogether and focus on the joys of daily life. But this outlook undermines character in the end. Consider some everyday choices: it’s nice to eat junk food in the moment; but we don’t because we anticipate a future of bad health. It’s nice to spend our pay check right away, but instead we save to provide stability and resources for a family. Looking far into the future and asking what is fundamentally important tends to encourage the better aspects of our nature. Insofar as people still desire to be great and achieve excellence, I think digging deeper is necessary. Maybe this is what Socrates had in mind when he chose death over compromising his ideals and claimed
The unexamined life is not worth living