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What Does “Living Life” Mean To You?
June 19, 2008
What is “living” ? Sounds like such a simple question, but I’m frequently surprised by how few people really consider what it really means to them.
And no, I don’t mean the involuntary act of breathing, and all the other things the body does to sustain itself. I’m talking about choosing your place in the world, finding it, and existing within it happily.
Some people seem to have it all figured out… on the surface, at least. But when you probe deeper, they really have no idea why they’re really making the choices they are. They just… do.
Today I was reading a letter from the editor of Men’s Health magazine where he was talking about becoming disengaged from life. The headline and subhead really got my attention: “Let’s Get Disengaged! - The perfect vacation isn’t about where your body is - it’s about where your mind is”
There were a few quotes along the side of the page that read:
There is more to life than increasing its speed. - Gandhi
This one from Robert H. Jackson:
Your job today tells me nothing of your future - your use of your leisure today tells me just what your tomorrow will be.
This one by Lin Yutang:
If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner, you have learned how to live.
This one by Josiah Gilbert Holland:
Work is the means of living, but is not living.
This one by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe:
We must always change, renew, rejuvenate ourselves; otherwise we harden.
And finally this one by Sydney J. Harris:
The time to relax is when you don’t have time for it.
In his article the editor of the magazine, David Zinczenko, talks about traveling to Cape Town, South Africa with a buddy for some R&R… well, sortof. At first he was so freaked out by the prospect of being disconnected from his Blackberry, he nearly ruined it for everyone. But slowly… surely… by day 4 he got into this groove where life there seemed more natural… and actually forgot to check his e-mail.
He said this vacation changed his life in wonderful ways and learned that “taking a break from the stress of daily life gives you the resources to better handle it when you return.”
What David said is all fine and good; I wouldn’t disagree with any of that… but consider this: what if vacations weren’t unique? What if every day was like a vacation? No stress, do whatever, no “work”, etc. What would life be like then? Paradise? Hell? Boring?
(don’t laugh until you’ve tried it… the answer may surprise you - it certainly surprised me)
Do we need variation in our lives? Do we need work to balance out the play? Do we need play to balance out the work? (yin-yang?)
I posed the “living” question to a friend of mine and her take was basically “If I love what I do for a living and can’t wait to get up every morning and go to work, then it’s not really ‘work’ therefore the problem is solved if I can balance doing what I love for work with what I do with other people in my spare time.”
Hmm… hard to argue with that (I’ve even said it myself before)… but… what if you’re not so lucky as to find work that pays well enough to live richly AND stirs up such daily passion? What if you’re like my friend Jason who loathes the idea of having to pander to the whims and instincts of the masses to sell a product or catering to the biased agenda of some company or university who controls how he directs his time? Or what if you’re like me who sometimes sees so many vast possibilities in a given situation, it literally paralyzes you from choosing just one to act upon? (one’s all you need, but oh so hard to choose)
This all got me to thinking about European living versus American living. Over here in the U.S., it seems to me most people are more defined by objects, and a “live to work” mentality… while Europeans tend to view it as “work to live” and any objects in their life are simply viewed as a “means to an end” toward this concept of “living.”
Here in America, we tend to have bigger, faster, shinier, and all-around nicer stuff… but over in Europe, they seem to have a bit better handle on what “living” means to them.
I’ve talked to a lot of Russian girls and their friends, families, etc. Things are much different over there post-communism but there are still remnants of the old state (for example, in Saint Petersburg, there are still areas of the city where access to running water is shut off, and then turned back on certain days of the week or certain hours of the day) They don’t have as good of quality “stuff” as we have… but they do seem to “live better” than a lot of people I’ve met…even though the average income over there is $500 to $750 per month.
Here in the U.S., casual family travel is sortof a big deal (especially now with gas prices double what they used to be not so long ago)… for example, my friend Jason’s family only travels to Florida or somewhere on the opposite end of the country once in a great while, and whenever they do, it’s a pretty big deal. They make average income and are in many ways like most Americans. Sure, there’s a significant segment who travel often, but most of us just kinda stay put where ever we happen to be.
But guess what? Every summer, almost like clockwork, half the entire female population of Russia (and also much of eastern Europe) all shuffles down to Turkey for the summer. And they ain’t staying in little grass huts or for free with people they know, either. We’re talkin’ high-end luxury resorts, poolside, beaches, volleyball, cabana boys and all. Then many of them also travel to far corners of Europe and even here to the United States on tourist and work permits.
And you know what? They’re all paying the same ticket prices as the rest of us, folks… and on about 1/4 the income (or much less) than even the poorest of us make.
Most of these Russian girls were shocked when I told them that even though American incomes make us look “rich” to them (their perceptions of us are exactly that… so if you’re a cute young American guy in Russia, you’re like a rock star)… the fact of the matter is they seem to actually have more freedom to live life however they want than WE do.
“Land of the free” my ass. Ha!
This realization fascinated me. There are a lot of reasons why it seems to be the case though. For one, they have a lot of stuff paid for them by the government that we do not (especially college and in some cases, their homes)… also, their financial habbits are not centered around debt and credit cards like Americans are… and they also seem to have a different view on what money means to them in their lives. Its more of that “means to an end” concept I was talking about earlier, than anything else. (for example, they’ll save up $2000 to take a trip to somewhere and think nothing of it when it sucks up all the money they have, forcing them to start from zero all over again)
Damn. A bone-dry bank account? There’s something in me that makes me believe I am unable to think like that. I understand it and respect it, but at the same time, I’m not sure if I could really “live” it. I guess I’m too afraid of losing everything and starting from zero (again)… but in the end, does that safeguard attutide keep me from ‘living to the fullest’? (geez, I hate that cliche expression, but I see no other way to word it)
Copywriter John Carlton said something that really struck a chord with me:
Summer used to last a lifetime, when I was a kid. More things would happen to me in a day than happen to me in a month now. I could get sunburned in the morning swimming, heal by afternoon into a bronzed tan while climbing trees in the park, and get in thirty games of over-the-line before inventing another “monster in the back yard” game at dusk. Then watch sci-fi films until our eyes bled, and be forced into bed at the very latest hour possible, still pumped.
I miss that sense of endless fun.
I miss living life like I was in a Beach Boys song.
It seems to me that one of the reasons life passes so fast these days when we’re older is because we’re living life far too much on “autopilot” - the brain senses sameness and just sorta zones out until something different happens. That’s why weeks, even months and sometimes whole YEARS can melt by without you being the wiser. We need variation and change in order to make these days on Earth last longer and mean more.
So what is “living” ? Is it relaxing, sitting on the couch watching your favorite movie? Is it running, walking, playing sports? Is it hanging out at some nightclub, drinking, picking up girls? Is it traveling, seeing the world and having random adventures like James Bond? Ever seen those Olive Garden commercials or an Italian movie where the family is all crazy - laughing hard, crying harder, sometimes angry and throwing furniture at each other? Are those experiences what living is?
Whenever you’re thinking about it, here’s another way to look at the picture: when you’re watching TV on the couch… imagine standing about 6 feet away, watching yourself in the scene… now take away the couch, take away the scenery, take away the TV - take away everything. All that’s left now is you, suspended in some gray void. What are you doing now? Not a damn thing. You’re just laying there in a random meaningless gray void like a dumbass. Same goes for sleeping. Eating’s not much different either. Unfortunately, neither is reading (and I love reading.)
But does that make any of those not-so-physical things any less “living” than, say, running, playing catch, volleyball, hiking, boating, or surfing?
The fact of the matter is… “living” is whatever you want it to be. You have to choose. No one can do it for you. And that is both a blessing and a curse… because it means the responsibility is entirely up to you to figure the whole damn mess out.
As for me, I’m still figuring a lot of it out. I don’t know when it will all end or even IF it will end. Sometimes I wish some omniscient being would come along and say “Hey Greg, do this, it’s perfect for you… don’t think about it, just DO it. I’ve already done all the thinking for you.” - but I know nothing like that will ever happen. It’d be childish to think it would.
I suppose that’s the comfort a lot of people get from religion; it gives a good excuse to remove some of the personal responsibility from making these kinds of hardcore decisions all on your own.
No matter what living is though, it comes down to a collective sum of your thoughts, choices, and interactions with other human beings over the course of your time here on the planet. Now you have to go figure out the rest.
Good luck with that.
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Tags: david zinczenko, disengagement, europe, gandhi, goethe, hell, john carlton, life, life lessons, living, men's health magazine, money, omniscience, paradise, Philosophy, play, relaxing, religion, russia, russian girls, stress, summer, turkey, vacations, workTopics: Philosophy |
June 20th, 2008 at 12:26 pm
You made a great point about “work and do what you love”. In a capitalistic world, in order to make money, you have to provide a product or service which panders to a great number of people, and since most people are mediocre, if you have an idea of doing something which doesn’t pander to their mediocrity, you’re bound to live in poverty.
You can make money selling weight loss pills, dating books, and shallow self-help “get rich” books, but if you write a comprehensive history of China, a philosophical book on the inner workings of the mind, or a paper solving various mathematical dilemmas… good luck getting that promoted on Oprah.
What happens is the people who work hard, resist the system, and try to work on inventing things live in poverty (unless they inherited riches from someone). They die, and then people finally realize the value of what they were doing. They glorify him with some little picture in their college textbooks, then they all begin to use his research, and private companies use his work to make some product, and everyone gets a better life but the person who did the work.
The only ways available to get money is either to 1) be an entrepreneur and make money and “escape” from the system, 2) get government contracts Also they only bid to people with college degrees, which forces you to go through an eight year system, which leaves you buried in debt to your eye-balls, not to mention takes up a huge percentage of your life, writing papers you don’t want to write, reading about things you don’t care about…. 10 years of that craziness will certainly take all life passion for your own research away from you.
What’s sad is that the system has been so heavily manipulated that if you don’t work full-time, you can’t even make enough money to do anything. People like me, who want to do research on all kinds of interesting things, get stuck instead working and doing all kinds of worthless work.
It’s hard to say “go and be free, do what you love” when you’re not free to do anything you want to do unless you have money, and the tyranny of the majority, and insane leaders bent on their own personal conquest, controls who gets money.
Obviously these people who control money lack every form of wisdom, as school teachers struggle to get by, worthless rappers have money to swim in, and our brightest scientists and inventors are employed by governments making weapons to kill us all.
I read about Thoreau, who goes and builds a cabin out in the middle of the woods near some lake, and works part-time a few months out of the year to make enough money to buy his books and food. Who can do that anymore? Today, everyone owns their own private property. All these invisible property lines exist. All land has been claimed. You go there, build yourself a little building, then the owner of the property comes and runs you off. The city comes and says, “The building you built doesn’t follow our codes” and they bulldoze it down. Then if you wish to build a place for yourself, it will cost you $100,000+ dollars, and that’s for a tiny shack. Working a normal job, part-time, like Thoreau did, that would take you over 10 years to save up, and that’s assuming you save ALL the money you make, and none is taken out for expenses. But in reality, if you’re making that little, all is taken in expenses.
You can’t live simple. You’re forced to live like all the mediocre people think life is supposed to be lived. You’re not supposed to ever read and look into your religion, and see if there’s problems with it. You’re not supposed to figure out what’s really going on in the world or politics. You’re not supposed to ever think about God, or any sort of philosophy of something bigger and greater than yourself. You’re not supposed to study the universe, and think of our big picture within it. You’re not supposed to read history, and see how things have played out in the past. (After all, that wonderful high school education takes care of that!).
Why can’t you be happy with a wife and kids, working some menial job? What’s with you Jason?
There’s no way around any of this. If you want to go down your own road, don’t expect it to be cleared and ready. You’ll have to slowly plow your way through with a hatchet.