How to Appreciate the Amazingness of Life
“Dissect your beliefs”, the person says. “Why, I’m happy with who I am. Very happy. Its a crap world and I have it good”, says I. “But I want to understand life more than intellectually…” they say… I don’t ask but think – how arrogant to assume I only understand life intellectually?! I mean, how the hell would THEY know shit from Martha about my level of understanding about MY LIFE?
Fact: people obsessed with figuring out the meaning of life ARE doing it intellectually.
Have you got air, water, food, friendship and security? If you have all of those then you’re better off than 80-90% of the planet. Don’t waste your life telling me what a hard time you have living with a part-time job in a first world city – in Hobart, Tasmania. Don’t insist that Personality-Cult-Leader X, Y or Z has all of the answers to the meaning of my life – MY LIFE is being experienced by me here and now.
People in cults, sects and other “LEADER-ORIENTED” pyramid structures tend to have a get out of conversation free card… it goes like… “but man I just want to feel life, not intellectually; I want to experience life.”
MY ANSWER: “Then EXPERIENCE it… Stop wasting it complaining about the intellectualisation of life in other people! If you’re thinking about life SO FRIGGEN HARD then you are wasting it; you ARE intellectualising it.”
Take it from ME, the BIG GUY who wasted so much of my life. I KNOW about WASTED TIME.
The trouble is that people are so pampered now and living in such decadent privilege that some of us just can’t get over our own self-importance. Does everything revolve around us? No. Get this idea: what if this is the life you’ve got, its a better life than 100 years ago and its better than the life most of the planet experience. Oh shit yeh, the washing up is boring… but get over it. Read history. Become world-aware.
Take it from me, the missing ingredient in experiencing your life is EFFORT times PERSPECTIVE. This now is all you’ve got… on a rock hurtling through space. Don’t you think that’s incredible enough? Seriously?
[I say this because the 7 Questions of Byron Katie remind me awfully much of standard run of the mill Organisational Behaviour questionnaires - keep it in perspective! Good enough in itself, but its NOT a religion, its a self-help focus. Nothing new. Move on... Not the Buddha... Goodbye.]
