krista4 said:
I wanted to post this here before its potentially gone:
wikkidpissah 25,772
Replied: May 25, 2017
Ok - here goes. You may not like it, but you may benefit from it.
A great philosopher - one of the more recent Dead White Guys - once said, "The feeling of being hurried is not usually the result of living a full life and having no time. It is born of a vague fear that we are wasting our time".
Meaning.
In a way, we are bugs. In a way, we are kings. What does that mean and why do we matter?
It matters because NO ONE in existence gets to be you on this day and know the difference but you, and no one ever will. That's an extraordinary gift - to feed, sleep, awaken and have the choice to make a child smile, kill a Commie, sing a song, put your life on the line just to see if you prevail, make an opinion forum laugh, nod or hurl, be the MVP in the room, cry over a deep feeling or memory, burn a woman DOWN.
Thing is, we don't do some of those things ANY day and don't to do some of them every day like we could and maybe should. Life takes work and lifework takes time and care and energy and focus. And you forget.
Never forget. Even the people who had to work every hour of every day hundreds of years ago just to stay alive took Sundays to be with family and community and thank God for the blessing of life. Never forget, You ARE a bug if you forget.
I'm not really a believer in God. Not an atheist - just don't know & don't need to know. Don't know if you do or not. Another recent Dead White Guy, popular author David Foster Wallace, said that it may turn out that God ends up to be the least repulsive thing we can worship. We ALL worship in one way or another, he said, but when we worship money & things, we never have enough; when we worship sex & body, we die 1000 deaths when it fades & sags; when we worship power, we must always have more or feel weak & afraid, when we worship intellect, we must always prove it or feel stupid & empty.
Long before reading that, i had felt kinda the same thing and decided to search for what a person who doesnt worship God can believe in to feel regular meaning in his life. I though & i thought. Boils down to two things.
Truth & beauty. You will NEVER feel empty, meaningless, ridiculous, buggish (or kingish, for that matter) again, if you make serving truth and/or beauty the center of your life.
When i was developing my theories on human happiness i came up with a great thought, "For each of us, there is a beauty only we can serve". I happen to have some artistic skill with words & music and put it to use as often as i can for the pure love of adding beauty to the world, successfully or not. Improving the space i occupy by doing so gives me a center that i can return to again & again and fill myself with joy and purpose.
I started to use some of my skill with words to convince others of this. It's been successful, except for one thing. I continue to believe EVERYONE has some art to them, but some have less than others and many in the middle of an already busy life have so little that the time away from being productive in other ways for such small yield may keep it from being a centering, joyous, successful venture.
What else, then? There's got to be something for everyone. I thought & i thought.
Truth. Burrowing through the bull#### built up in your head to figure out what you actually know and care about and then sharing that originality with others is an art. Serve mankind in a way that's meaningful and beauty is served.
Those are your choices - serve God, serve beauty, serve truth. Serve. Worship the service of life - yours, loved ones, strangers. Add your own meaning. Dedicate yourself to improving yourself and your corner of the world and your every act is free & meaningful. Good luck -
p.s. i have some thoughts on your relationship probs - though not as many as you might like - but that is for another time.