Purpose of life

BedHead
Tue, 30 Jan 2007 00:41:21 +0000

Brand 182 did a good job in a little space. But of course, I want to say something:

Some will say find something outside yourself, bigger than yourself, that you believe in and dedicate yourself to that.

And I agree largely with that, but for me that can make you purely sacrificial, and life should involve a bit of selfishness too, I think. Though I hate the word selfishness. This selfishness would involve:

fulfillment in family
fulfillment in friendship
fulfillment in love
sexual fulfillment
professional fulfillment
physical and mental health (which you can partly control)

This all involves following your heart, listening to yourself, and shutting out to a certain extent what others and the world impose on you. Those who are happiest learn to live within their own rhythms I have noticed.

And if you are a chronically unhappy person – work on that with discipline. Try exercise. Try spiritual fulfillment. Try medicine (yes, that helps some people). And hang in there.

This is a slightly more detailed version of maximize the sum of your happiness. The problem with maximizing the sum of your happiness as a goal is that it is easier to focus on your happiness today vs. long-term fulfillment. Yes, live today. But life is often very long for people, so only living for the present can conflict with setting you up for happiness in the future. However, I think that most CCers don’t have this problem, of excluding a focus on the future for the joy of the present.