Tag Archives: life

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Full Steam Ahead

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Do life’s challenges and concerns end by the time you reach old age (say 65, 75)?  Is it easier when you are older than when you are young and constantly struggling with stress from worrying about what is next?

This is a strange way to look at it.  Life can be just as sweet and fulfilling no matter how many birthdays you have had.  The daily challenges, stress and joy we experience only end when we are dead.

Sweet Failure

Whether you are 12 or 80, living is made up of challenges and successes and these are the things worth continuing to live for.

There is no age in which life’s failure to be sweet at any given point in time is not painful but likewise the enjoyment of success gives pleasure.

Age and experience may well result in changing perspectives but we don’t stop living fully just because we are getting older.  It is not easier to cope with age because you have done it all, it is just different.

Purpose

The most important aspect of any life at any age is purpose.  Believing you have a purpose, a raison d’être, is really the only basic requirement to living a long life of great enjoyment, decade after decade.

Whatever age you are it is critical for you to believe they are all worthwhile.  Anticipate the enjoyment coming with age.  The end of your life does not occur until death.

Up to that point cherish and enjoy every moment, they will not be repeated.

 

 

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

The Endless Search

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During my high school days I had a personal goal to determine the meaning of life.  Not the Monty Phython  variety which was more tongue in check, but a logical rational explanation.

God Explains All

During my early childhood there was an attempt to indoctrinate me into a belief that God explained all.  Simplistically man was created in gods image, mankinds purpose (the meaning of life) was to serve god.

My own observations led me to the conclusion that god was an artifact invented by other humans  to both satisfy their own need for meaning as well, for those with  less scruples to leverage as a power base.

The Search Continues

So far, my own experience is that the search for meaning is endless.  The purpose of my own life has ultimately become; “to search for meaning”.

That is to say the action of searching is both the purpose and meaning of my life.  The search itself has no result beyond more searching.

The actions associated with the search give me pleasure and realization my purpose lies in more searching, that is what I do and I enjoy it.

The End

This personal solution to the meaning of life is gratifying but it does not explain the ending; i.e., death.  If death is linked to the meaning of life, searching endlessly stops at death.

What then is the purpose of death?  To stop the cycle of endless searching?  If that is the case, as with all questions around meaning – why?

So while the meaning of life being an endless search for answers is satisfying me at the moment, I wonder if this will change with time.

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Seeking Fullfillment

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From birth, we are all seeking to achieve our desires, get what was promised to us or our predicted destiny.  Getting these things creates a sense of fullfillment.

It is both satisfying and a good feeling.  I remember a moment years ago following a family visit to my parents, my dad commented on how fullfilled I appeared.

At that point, in my life with a young family consisting of myself, wife and three young children, I did feel very content and satisfied.  He was right.  It was such a powerful feeling that my Dad could sense the aura.

Journey or Destination

For a moment in time, I had reached my destination.  Very quickly though, the journey to the next point of fullfillment began.  For me, this is as it should be.

Life is a combination of seeking and achieving.  Without the thrill of the chase the outcomes have far less meaning.  This is not just keeping busy to avoid boredom but doing so in a meaningfull way.

True fullfillment requires both the effort of the attempt as well as the achievement of the desire.

Enjoy

A key aspect of the journey, and ultimate achievement of your desires,  is to enjoy along the way.  Embrace the opportunity to live your life to the fullest.

Both the things that annoy and worry you and those that make you explode with pleasure comprise your journey through life.  Your personal enjoyment is constructed of all these things.  Don’t let them derail you.

It’s all good (what a mantra).

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

High on Life

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If you were asked, would you like to be born, that is given the opportunity to accept lifes journey or not, what would you do?  The response varies widely by person, but it can be very a very compelling indicator of your current emotional state.

This is a point in time question you can use to do a quick check of your own emotional well being.  An abrupt no probably means you are not having a good time, on the other hand an enthusiastic yes is the opposite.

Set the Context

For this technique, from a personal perspective,  the first thing I did was set the context.   I asked myself some clarifying questions.

What are the options, being born or ” ?” .  And secondly what does lifes journey mean, given I haven’t been born I would not understand the context of “life”.

For this hypothetical analysis, I classify the state before birth as non-existance.  Being born gives me an existance for which I am free to do whatever I am able, subject to unknown constraints .

That is , life will have constraints but these are not always predictable.  Some will be helpful, some will not.  It will continue until my existance ends, that duration is unpredictable.

And the answer is

For me the answer is always on the yes side of the equation, the level of enthusiasm I feel about it relates directly to my current state of mind.

The value in asking the question lies in the assistance it provides me in determining what I need to do to trend toward a widely enthusiastic yes, that being the state of mind I prefer.

Simply put,if I am trending toward wishing I was never born, I need to examine myself internally, take control and change my state of mind toward the positive.

 

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

I exist, I will cease to exist

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The awareness of ones existence leads to the realization someday you will cease to exist.  Death.  This in turn often results in the belief in a higher power.

This existance, and it’s ultimate end becomes explained in a logical fashion,  through a strong belief in in something whose existance is unproven.  In fact, only exists because of belief.

What if there is no higher power

The search for the meaning of life, the purpose or goal is often explained as a subservience to god.  Not a god you can see or talk to but one that only exists in your mind, that is a product of your beliefs.

Without this explanation,  our existence is a short trip through a reality of our own making ending in a death, which is not (of our own making).  This results in a strong motivation to believe in a higher power.

Such beliefs can be used as a justification for action, who can prove they are untrue?  Without this kind of fundemental motivation our lives become little more than a beginning and an end.

Not for everyone

Belief in a higher power, a god if you will, is not for everyone.  Personal philosophies that focus on the self, “it’s all about me” represent examples of an alternate approach.

I am here.  Let me do all the good I can for myself and others while I travel this road.  When it is done, I will have no regrets.

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Enjoying every moment

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From birth, we have been given  a great opportunity to seek personal pleasure, happiness and joy.  Whether we do or not is a personal choice.

Emotions like anger, frustration, anxiety and others like them don’t fit into the pleasure category for me.  Yet they exist, and although my goal is pleasure I sometimes cannot stop myself from feeling these unpleasant emotions.

Emotional Management

Meditation, quiet reflection or solitary comptemplation are just some of the techniques I have observed others using,and have used myself, to comtrol manage and even eliminate these negative emotions.

I have found though that the most powerful practice is self awareness.  That is interpreting how you are feeling, diagnosing why you feel that way, determine if it acceptable or appropriate and accept or alter the feeling based on this analysis.

At peak operation this self awareness operation is all completed “in the moment”.  A highly skilled practitioner of self awareness rarely gets hooked by external factors and behaves for their own pleaasure (as long as it does not impede on that of others).

Developing the skill

Self awareness is a consciously practised learned behaviour.  You are not born with this skill (i.e., not an inherited trait) but rather must teach yourself the practice.

Like so many skills, you start at the bottom range and through experience and practice you mature your capabilities.  The pre-requisite is only recognition this skill exists, is of value and is key to you maximizing your personal pleasure.