I think that it is possible you may get satisfaction from talking about not having satisfaction. From past experience, I can guess that this is probably what you do most of--think and talk about not being happy. Thinking and talking. Talking and thinking. It’s quite an addiction, isn’t it? Get’s you very far, doesn’t it? You can think and talk all you want from now until the End...ain’t gonna make a spot of difference.
Oookay. I’m feeling inspired today!! Prepare yourself. 
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Let me start with a question…
“What is the meaning of life?”
WRONG. 
Okay, next question.
“When do you feel most fulfilled?”
Let’s say you set out to write a timeline of your existence, you call it, The Chronicle of Grant. You list all of the activities you have ever done in column A. And then you list how fulfilled you felt for each of those activities in column B. Every activity, ever action, ever in you life, thus far.
When do you feel the most fulfilled?
What do you glean from your timeline?
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Do you know what the Dalai Lama’s biggest problem is? What this blissed-out holy man struggles with? In an interview, he was asked this very question. What do you think he answered? Does he secretly desire women, fame, wealth, hate people, eat meat… no, none of that. “Laziness.” The Dalai Lama, super-Buddhist, struggles daily with laziness and feels that struggle, wants to overcome it. Desires not be lazy. Hmmm....
When I've created satisfaction for myself I'm demotivated and just bask in the glow, but then when I'm motivated, I'm dissatisfied.
I have another way to express this sentiment. Let’s try... LAZINESS. Look, you’ve got to call a spade a spade. You’ve got to be honest with yourself. You’re lazy.
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Now back to the question of fulfillment.
As I see it, there are three kinds of people. (aren’t there always!)
I. The Lazy (Do)
II. The Blissed-Out (Be)
III. The Entrepreneurs (Be + Do)
Lazy people are not fulfilled. They gratify their genetic desires and fearingly avoid the pain of not following their social conditioning.
Blissed-out people are tremendously fulfilled, but THEY DON’T DO ANYTHING.
Entrepreneurs bliss-out WHILE they work. What a concept!!! Granted, they probably aren’t as euphoric as a professional meditator, but they can point to things and say, “That is mine,” and “I did that.” “I made that.” “I created that…from nothing.”
I used to struggle between these two modes of being, constantly, for years. I kept switching back and forth. Each Tao seemed to have its own merits. In the end, what finally sold me were two things.
A. Looking to my own experience and remembering when I felt the most full-filled.
B. Looking to evolution and what the animals do, outside of the infinite confusion of man and meaning.
The human mind plays all sorts of games with meaning. The great question is…how do you arrive at a perspective on life that is independent of perspective? How do you find meaning in a life that seems to have no intrinsic meaning? One person says x, another y, another z. Each thinks he’s right.
A good metaphor:
You’re in a drawing classroom. 36 students stand in a circle, each with easels. In the center you’ve got... a woman who is sewing the sleeve on a jacket.
It is the task of each of these 36 students to draw what they see. Each student draws a still picture of the process of the lady sewing the sleeve from their own vantage points. The result? 36 different pictures. Each artist says, “Look, my picture is clearly the right one.” They each think that their picture is *the* picture. Their angle is *the* definitive angle of vantage.
Where do you go from here? (I know…let’s murder our brother in the name of individual perspective!)
The question of Meaning. How do you answer it? Is life intrinsically meaningless? If so, then we should all kill ourselves. I mean…what’s the point, you know? Existentialism...no one wants to face it. It gnaws away at my mind to think on it.
Well, that’s when I realized that the true meaning wasn’t in any of the 36 pictures. IT WAS IN THE PROCESS of the lady sewing that sleeve on that sweater.
Artists = thinking and (self)-talking people that just don’t get it
Pictures = the myriad religions and philosophies
Sewing = work
WORK! Getting lost in your work.
Exuberating in challenging activity.
Alas, it is the only game in town.
Why do I say this?
Let’s look to creatures who don’t have minds for the answer to that one.
Evolution.
Hundreds of millions of years of evolution. Building and re-building. Creating and re-creating. Better and better. More and more complex.
Do you REALLY think, in your heart of hearts, that the point of all this... all this struggle and striving and perpetual improvement--in nature and then in civilization--that the point of it all was so we, humanity, could reach a state of “non-work”? Is this what it was all about? Hmm? I don’t buy it. Not for a second. Yet, I'd venture to say that 90% of civilized people believe this. And so they grumble about their job and their chores and then they rush home real fast so they can vegetate, all the while dreaming of wistful retiremental pastures.
Let’s play another thought experiment:
Have you read H.G. Well’s Time Machine? Man has succeeded in making a utopia. No one needs to work. Let's say that machines give us food and maintain our infrastructure and so no one has to ever work or challenge themselves ever again. Fast forward 800,000 years... Man, now called "The Eloi" has *devolved*. Our adult bodies are now small, like a child's. Our brain size has shrunk. Muscles are weak. We've forgot how to use language and symbolic thought, the voice box has atrophied. We spend our days reclining, sleeping, eating prodigiously sized fruits and having sex, spreading our unfit, decreasingly complex genes.
Lovely.
The reason why the WWII generation was the last GREAT generation is precisely because of the atrophy of our order-affirming beliefs (aka work ethic). WWII chaps grew up during the depression. Fought the good fight against Hitler and Tojo. Came back and rebuilt the nation from the ground up, suburbia, highways, skyscrapers. And then...........stasis. STASIS? Again, was the endpoint of all that work so they could reach a point of "non-work"? 50’s suburbia was supposed to be paradise on earth…and you and I know the reality was far different. The babyboomers are not motivated by grand visions or a love for work. Fortunately, though, we are still motivated by Greed. That is why the U.S.--a simple and lazy nation by and large-- is still on top. The ideal state of existence since the 60's is... our idea of a post-60’s utopia is a land of non-work. We work so we can rush home and spend some time not-working. Thank god for Capitalism, though. If it weren't for capitalism, we'd all just sit at home and masturbate our senses. Capitalism is modelled wonderfully on evolution. Instead of physical pain, we've got lack of money; instead of physical pleasure, we've got the promise of more money. If someone isn't performing up to snuff, they get pounced. Markets are like jungles. Keeps us on our toes!! Keeps us #1 in GDP, military, technology, cultural influence, overall power. I like it. Just one problem... where's the drive to work outside of our paying jobs?
Do you know what a Golden Age or Renaissance is? It is when the numbers of people in a society who exuberate in work reach critical mass. We should all be so fortunate as to have been born into such an age.
And socialism? Bah... “Socialist Paradise” is an oxymoron. Are we domesticated animals? It seems like most of us want to be. “Give us security!” “Feed us!” “Provide for us, please!” Cows, Sheep essentially munch on grass and yawn. Oh whoopee doo, I know that’s my idea of paradise! *yawn*
Think about it, Grant. Is that what this was all about? Life? Hundreds of millions of years of evolution? So you could sit on your ass? You’re on the top, dude! You’re numero uno. You're the most complex organism the universe has ever seen. You're IT, man. And you’re telling me that you don’t get satisfied from work?!?!? That just makes no sense to me.
We shame the name of every parental organism that came before us when we lather ourselves in sloth.
If you think of yourself at the end of a super-long dinner table, your father sits to your right, his father sits to his right, his father sits to his right, his father sits to his right, his father sits to his right, his father sits to his right, all the way back to single-celled organisms floating in the primordial soup of amino acids 2.4 billion years ago. Do you remember how industrious your grandfather was? And his father before him? They were good industrious people, weren't they? It is only really the past two generations that have got this absurd notion that they can be happy by being stable. It's not possible. Stability doesn’t exist in nature. Are you not part of nature? How can you transcend 2.4 billion years of evolution in two generations? By enlightenment? Enlightenment is essentially denying the importance of evolution. It's saying, "you know what, I'm not gonna play that game any more." It's hopping off the path of eternal toil...and you do become profoundly happy when that happens, I agree. But was that God's Plan? It seems more like an aberration.
"Engagement" is much more immanent than enlightenment. You don’t have to sit in the same spot for 20 years and stare at a blank wall. You can engage yourself in a complex activity and fulfill yourself within seconds.
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I've realized something on a very personal level too. For the past 10 years, all that I have ever wanted in life is to wake up, start working (out of freedom, not servitude) and go to sleep. Then do the same thing the next day. The 14 hour work day. If I search deep enough, and I think I have, that is ALL I have ever wanted since I stopped doing that at the end of my childhood.
And when I say “work”, I don’t mean it in a stoic/nazi sense. Not at all. I mean... you know, LIFE. Shaving, walking, cooking meals, chit chat, plays, concerts, basketball, mowing your lawn, reading books, keeping journals, raising kids, service, you know... all that STUFF. Not just any stuff though. Complex stuff.
What I know is that pursuing these complex tasks--the actual process, not the goal, is the most fulfilling experience of my life. MORE fulfilling (not more euphoric, granted) than meditation. That is what I have learned by asking myself, “When, in my life have I felt the most fulfilled?” Did you know that Dr. Mihaly found that 50% of people report entering the flow state at work and the accompanying full-fillment that brings? But when we go home, only 15% of us find that flow during leisure time? So why is it that we spend our entire lives trying to get to that leisure time? Makes no sense. Real leisure is active leisure. Complex leisure. Not vegetation. If I wanted to be a domesticated animal, I'd have been born a sheep! Don’t give me this retirement crap either. Did you know the average male dies three years after he retires? He becomes redundant. Irrelevant to nature‘s plan. An old AND non-working person? “Eliminate,” says Mr. Nature.
Does TV challenge you? No? Smash it. Or watch complex stuff.
I can’t be happy playing a computer game on Baby Level for long. I get used to it. I master it. I get bored with it. So what do I do? Do I keep playing on the same level? Of course not. I want more of that exuberation, so I crank up the difficulty in order to stay challenged. And I keep doing this and doing this...until I’m the best. Why? No f-ucking reason, that’s why!! Because it fulfills me. Because it fulfills all living organisms to be the best they can be in all things important to them.
That’s the story of life... Order vs. Chaos
Evolution is the history of the ever-increasing complexity of living organisms.
I don’t know how the story began and I don’t know how it ends. All that I know is that I’m a part of that story. My shaving is a part of the grand tale of evolution. Seems silly. But you know, Alexander the Great had to shave. Aristotle had to eat his veggies. Jesus had to bathe. The Buddha had to breathe. The legions of faceless laborers over the millennia, they had to slave away and raise kids. Leonardo had to read each and every sentence of every book he ever read, line by line. Newton had to learn to say “Da Da” before he could say “apple“. Monkeys had to learn to hang on to tree branches. Squirrels had to learn to find food during ice ages. Amoebas had to learn to feel around. Single-celled organisms had to learn to band together.
They didn’t just snap their fingers *snap* and spontaneously become more complex organisms. They WORKED. They expended energy to perform challenging actions. Continuously. Ceaselessly. Then they had sex and kids to carry on the tradition of toil. Then they died. And that’s all we can say for them.
And that’s all we can say for you.
[This message has been edited by Brian649 (edited February 11, 2002).]
