(October 10, 2017 at 3:01 pm)Astreja Wrote:(October 10, 2017 at 1:25 pm)Jehanne Wrote: It's very sad to "live" for the day when one must die with the hope of attaining some state that does not exist.
I hesitate to even call that living. If you need to somehow justify your present existence with some hypothetical future reason, and look forward to future happiness rather than fully engaging with life in the present, you're doing it wrong.
(October 10, 2017 at 1:49 pm)wallym Wrote: {Meaning is} better than subjective. It's physiological. It's just some internal wiring. It's so rudimentary that it's pretty hilarious we take it so seriously. We're like simple video game characters. "You gave me a potato. You now have meaning +1 to me."
There may be an element of that, but I think the wiring has a fair amount of plasticity and that we can deliberately modify it with things like repeated actions. (Either that, or my wiring has been optimized for woodwinds, chocolate, and insomnia...)
I don't agree with blindly swallowing a fictional second shot no. Just like I don't buy the Hindu or Buddhist superstition of multiple lives in reincarnation.
But I also don't like "fully engaging" because that is simply another stupid ploy the rich use to get you to become their cheap labor.
Life isn't an either or script, and there is no one correct way to live it. If your idea of partaking in life is expending energy 16 hours a day 6 or 7 days a week, that is still just you. Most humans like and need balance in their lives. And me, my idea of life is staying at home, and being at home. I don't want to sweat all my waking hours just because someone else says I should.
I want to be me, and being at home is me. That is my life, and I like it simple. I don't see the need to spend tons of money every day, or sweat because someone else thinks I should. If all we have is one life, and I agree, we only get one, than there is only one right way to live your life. BE YOURSELF, because trying to be a clone of someone else to me is bullshit.
I only agree that "fully engaged" to me, means being self aware and being aware of the world around you. Outside that it isn't a mater of running yourself into the ground physically.
My late mom wanted only one thing for me, to be happy, and that really is all one can strive to do.