This post marks the final entry in Act III: Understanding Purpose. Throughout this section, we have peeled back the layers of the ego to examine our deepest anxieties about existence and meaning. We explored our innate craving for cosmic reason, the exhausting pursuit of legacy, and the repackaged fear of death that drives our desire to be remembered. By navigating the space between the despair of nihilism and the liberating freedom of Zen, I hope you have arrived at the same crucial realization I have: purpose is not a pre-written destiny we must find, but rather a quiet joy we actively create in the present moment.
Now, with the heavy burden of a grand narrative finally lifted, we are left to explore what comes next. I want to close this chapter with a few meditative thoughts on the simple, profound art of living strictly for the sake of living.
The Pursuit of Happiness
If you live in the United States, or if you are familiar with American history, you will know the famous phrase the pursuit of happiness from the Declaration of Independence. This is a fantastic directive to take. We should all approach life with the ultimate goal of pursuing what brings us joy.
Notice that the phrase does not guarantee that you will automatically be happy, nor does it promise that you will obtain riches. Instead, it states that you have the right to pursue happiness in spite of everything. This document was originally drafted during tumultuous times, when the colonies were actively rebelling against England. Yet, the founders still enshrined this phrase for future generations because they believed it was the entire point of human endeavor. They wanted the freedom to pursue happiness, and they wanted that for you, too.
There will be many obstacles in your way during this pursuit. This is entirely natural and expected. If life were just a constant, uninterrupted stream of happiness, you would have nothing to compare it to. Life would become dull, and eventually, you would find reasons to be miserable. Good things in life do not exist in a vacuum. There are counter-balances and two sides to every coin. Happiness must coexist with sadness at some point, otherwise you would not even recognize what happiness is.
The Declaration of Independence does not tell us to avoid sadness. It only states to pursue happiness because the authors knew that this pursuit would not be easy. They knew that you would experience trials and tribulations along the way, just as they had. They did not want people to just stay alive to exist, merely surviving without an admirable pursuit. They wanted you to try and obtain a life worth living, and to enjoy it as much as possible.
Forever and Beyond
Recently, I had a conversation with someone on Reddit who was terrified of dying. They expressed an intense desire to live forever and were struggling to cope with the reality of mortality. They explained that they were trying to live just long enough for robotics and medicine to advance to a point where they could install hardware into their bodies, or download their consciousness into a computer system, allowing them to live forever.
This is a literal attempt to live for the sake of being alive. It is the ego desperate to stay relevant for as long as possible. But let’s take this theory to its logical conclusion and compare it to a natural life.
If this Redditor’s dream became reality, artificial devices would extend their physical life far beyond what is naturally possible. Imagine they live hundreds, or even thousands, of years into the future. We must also assume that no accidents ever befall them, and no random dangers ever end their existence.
On and on they live, avoiding danger and staying perfectly safe, eventually outliving the rest of us who chose a normal life path. But think about all the times in your own life where you have been bored or dissatisfied with what you were doing in a given moment. Those moments must compound exponentially when you have lived for hundreds of generations. I can only imagine how stale life would taste after you have tried every experience and tasted every flavor available.
When I raised this point, noting that the Earth would eventually transform to be uninhabitable for humans, they had a quick rebuttal. They said humans would transition to a spacefaring civilization, living on a different planet or a specialized space station.
It is possible that could be the case. But eventually, our Sun will expire and explode. Long after that, the Milky Way will collide with the Andromeda galaxy. There is much speculation surrounding the end of time, but my favorite theory is that of the cyclical universe, wherein everything is eventually pulled back into a singularity through gravity before another big bang occurs. A human surviving this is impossible. Your atomic structure would completely destabilize.
The Value of an Ending
This is all to say that after all of that avoiding danger, after surviving countless cosmic events, you still end up at an end. So, what was the point of the struggle?
There is no escaping an end because we had a beginning. There is no such thing as a reality that has a beginning but no end. Imagine if you started reading a book and it simply never finished. It just kept going, page after page, indefinitely. This would bring an immense sense of dissatisfaction. When we begin a new piece of content, whether it is a book, a movie, or a show, we all want a satisfying ending.
This is true for life, too. We want a satisfying ending to our personal stories. Stop trying to live just for the sake of being alive. Do not let the fear of the final page stop you from enjoying the chapters you are in right now. Seek out the positives, pursue your happiness, and focus on the enjoyment, the love, and the unique story that you are creating each and every day.
Very well written, Ryan. 🙂