Life philosophy is a battlefield where everyone opposes everyone else, and this article simply discusses my current views. Let's start with two questions:
- What is the meaning of life?
- How can we better experience life?
What is the meaning of life?#
Existence and the Demise of Value#
First, let me give my answer to the first question: Life has no meaning.
We are thrown into a chaotic world by chance, seemingly having absolute freedom and infinite possibilities, but life is extremely short and possibilities are extremely limited. We come and go by chance, and there is no rule guiding us on what we "must" do in this process. In other words, our entire life has no purpose.
Even though life has no purpose, we still carry this meaningless life, this soul with no place to rest, and bravely navigate our ship. This journey has no destination, but in the vast sea, we constantly anchor ourselves for this journey. This anchoring is the "navigation rules" we set for ourselves, and through this set of rules, we reach the milestones and seek the so-called "sense of meaning".
Existence precedes essence. We exist first, then explore meaning and give meaning to our existence. The journey has no end, but we anchor ourselves to individual milestones, giving meaning to this endless journey. Through this anchoring, we seek meaning in this endless sea journey and give meaning to our own existence. After all, what determines us is not the "journey itself", but the "meaning we give to the journey".
However, this post-given "sense of meaning" has two hidden dangers.
First, it determines the intrinsic and relative value. Everything we do is actually following the course we have set for ourselves. This anchoring is always a self-illusion, relying on our own immediate and tangible feedback. In our eyes, this course exists, and it has value. Perhaps you can reach a consensus on values with some people, but values vary from person to person, and your actions cannot fully obtain the recognition of others. Fortunately, our actions do not need to seek recognition from others. It is enough as long as we feel that everything has meaning.
Second, this anchoring is prone to losing feedback and generating a sense of disillusionment. For example, workaholics anchor their "sense of meaning" in work, but if their hard work does not bring the expected performance feedback or recognition from their boss, they may develop self-doubt or inferiority complex, lose enthusiasm for life, and feel disillusioned.
Or conversely, in the movie "Soul," the protagonist Joe Gardner has been pursuing his jazz dream throughout his life. After many twists and turns, he finally gets the opportunity to perform on stage with a famous musician, and the performance is very successful. After the performance that night, he suddenly feels lost in his heart. He has achieved what he wanted in his heart, but he finds that besides the short-lived excitement, there is nothing else. At the same time, he loses his goal for tomorrow. "So, what's next?" he murmurs.
Or in the fast-paced urban life, we always hurry, and there are always many urgent things waiting for us to do. Each thing seems to be of top priority, and in order to strive, we have to exhaust ourselves. Sometimes we feel exhausted and exhausted, and the more we want to do our best, the more we cannot achieve completeness. Life becomes fragmented and hollow. Suddenly, we realize that our life form is no longer complete.
The Present and the Experience of Life#
Before solving the above problems, we need to clarify an existential proposition: that humans are individual "existences" in different moments, and the reason why humans become humans is because they exist. In other words, as Adler said, "Life is a series of moments, and the most important thing is the present moment."
There is only one "reality" that I have always believed in—I am alive at this moment, I exist, I breathe, and I feel the world around me—this is the only reality. Some people say that the ultimate value is to contribute to human progress, while others say that the greatest meaning is to contribute light and heat to the goal of world peace. Regardless of the distant gods that ordinary people cannot see, even if they exist, so what? The universe has existed for billions of years, while human history is only a few thousand years, and the Earth is like a drop of water in the ocean, and human history is like a mayfly. The so-called gods, from the perspective of the universe, everything is meaningless.
And even so, we still exist, isn't that a great miracle? The only certain existence is the present moment, and the only thing that matters is the present, the feeling of this moment. We must first exist before we can talk about everything related to life. Understanding this, we need to focus on each step we take, find solid and powerful support and happiness from it, experience the scenery, setbacks, and bitterness of the journey.
In the aesthetics of life, "experience" is the key to integrating a person's inner consciousness with external facts, individuals with society. Life is a life experience composed of fragmented experiences, including suffering, choices, regrets, loneliness, hope, and happiness.
We stroll through the torrent of time, discover life, experience the world, embrace beauty, use a renewed experimental way of thinking to stimulate our emotions, appreciate, learn, and deepen our lives, and experience the most diverse world as possible.
At that time, we will gradually understand that the meaning of life is not bestowed by so-called "major life events," but is implemented in the impermanence of life. For example, two days ago, when I was waiting for the nucleic acid test results in the hospital in the early morning, the nurse sister brought a blanket; then when I returned home, I encountered a stray cat begging for food at the door; at noon today, my neighbor brought me milk tea to repay me for helping with the delivery. Just now, when I opened the music app, I heard "Walking in the Torrent of Time," looking forward to the finale of "Loki" next Wednesday.
These are my present, my life, my meaning.
How to Better Experience Life?#
In the previous section, we talked about the absurdity and solution between meaningless existence and giving meaning to life—experiencing the present life. Now, let's answer the second question: How can we better experience life? Here are several effective practices I have summarized:
- Courage to be content with the ordinary
- Broaden your perspective and overlook life
- Embrace diversity and accumulate sweet moments
- Seek connections and maintain kindness
- Knowledge, sensitivity, and imagination
- Live seriously and positively
Courage to be Content with the Ordinary#
In "The Courage to Be Disliked," it mentions "the courage to be content with the ordinary", which requires us to accept our ordinary selves. Being ordinary means being ordinary, we are just one of the many people, passing by here by chance. But being ordinary does not mean being incapable, and we don't need to deliberately show our superiority.
Today's society is a society that sells anxiety. There are countless articles and courses that create anxiety because everyone wants to become the most outstanding person. But when anxiety becomes prevalent, people become restless and forget that everyone is an ordinary but special person who can strive and make efforts, and can constantly pursue and challenge themselves, but there is no need to forget the courage to be content with the ordinary.
As the saying goes, "Achievement does not depend on external definitions, but on whether you live according to your own will." (Pixar designer, Shi Yan).
Broaden Your Perspective and Overlook Life#
"Overlooking" is a unique way of thinking of the protagonist in "Summer with Monika." When feeling at a loss, another perspective of oneself will appear in the mind, overlooking the scene, and conducting objective analysis. This way of thinking is actually to broaden the perspective and "detach oneself" to avoid being immersed in self-obsession and unable to extricate oneself.
As mentioned earlier, the absurdity felt by workaholics or Joe Gardner in "Soul" comes from the sudden loss of immediate feedback from the anchoring of the "sense of meaning." The root cause is that the anchoring of the "sense of meaning" is too single, and the pursuit of the "sense of meaning" is too persistent. If you broaden your perspective, even if things don't go well in this job, you can simply change jobs and try again; or take a step back and think about what will happen. Work is not everything in life, and there are many other meaningful things waiting for us to do in life. There is no need to be so persistent, and no rule requires you to do your best.
Broadening your perspective and overlooking life is a good remedy for getting rid of the sense of absurdity.
Embrace Diversity and Accumulate Sweet Moments#
In the previous section, it was mentioned that the sense of value disillusionment comes from the anchoring of the "sense of meaning" being too single and the pursuit of the "sense of meaning" being too persistent. But if we diversify our lives, seek more interesting things, even if we lose the feedback from one anchor, we can continue to supplement the "sense of meaning" from another anchor.
The character designer of "Soul," Shi Yan, said in an interview, "Life is a series of experiences, and it is worth it to experience as many things as possible in the same time."
If we compare the fragments of our life to the memory balls in "Inside Out," we will find that the memories stored in those memory balls are never just a single emotion, but a mixture of colorful and rich emotions. In such a rich life experience, we can experience diverse senses of meaning.
In addition, accumulating sweet moments discovered in life is also a key part of life experience, and the secret to accumulating sweet moments is diversity and inclusiveness.
As mentioned earlier, value is a relative concept, so we should not anchor meaning with a value orientation (especially a utilitarian value orientation). Instead, we should recognize the complexity and diversity of the real world. Only doing things that you think are "valuable" is very one-sided and regrettable because it will miss many rounded, sharp, niche, and simple beauties in life. Lowering the requirements for value will actually allow us to discover more sweet moments in life because you will become more inclusive, happier, and able to experience life more objectively and continuously improve.
Therefore, by lowering the value hierarchy in our hearts, we can better accumulate sweet moments because you will become more inclusive, happier, and able to experience life more objectively and continuously improve.
In this world, some people establish authority, and there will be people blindly following; there are also many people who admire niche beauty, and some people think they are just showing off. These are just different ways of observing the world from different people, different times, different places, and different perspectives. And as long as we can see the essence of things and accumulate sweet moments within the perspectives of various people, it doesn't matter what method we use to see or how we see it.
Seek Connections and Maintain Kindness#
The life experience we desire is not just ethereal happiness, and the meaning we give to life is not just empty value. It should be based on practical things. When we give meaning to existence, we must seek connections with practical things—connections and interactions with the external world, with others, and even with our future selves.
In positive psychology, giving and sharing are important sources of happiness. Whether it is giving gifts to others, giving affirmation and gratitude to others, or helping others with small favors, sharing your life and happiness with others... All of these can build a bridge of goodwill between you and the external world. Be a kind person, do meaningful things for yourself, for others, and for the world. In this process, establish connections with yourself, with others, and with the world, and feel happiness, satisfaction, and joy. This is always a strategy that will not go wrong.
Therefore, to experience a happy life, it often does not depend on what you have, but on what you can give, and on how many bridges of goodwill you can build.
Knowledge, Sensitivity, and Imagination#
Life experience is based on our perception of the world. I believe that the three most important elements to enhance perceptual ability come from "knowledge," "sensitivity," and "imagination" mentioned in "Moon and Sixpence."
Knowledge#
Knowledge determines the scope of perception (content) of the world.
Learning and progress are major tasks throughout life. Acquiring knowledge and improving our cognitive abilities allow us to re-understand and comprehend things that we could not fully understand or even understand before. It is regrettable if we miss some life experiences due to limitations in knowledge.
Therefore, knowledge determines the scope of our perception of the world. The deeper and broader the knowledge we possess, the deeper and simpler the world we can understand.
Sensitivity#
Sensitivity determines the boundary of perception (outline) of the world.
As mentioned earlier, our only real existence is "I am alive at this moment", and to make this existence fulfilling and meaningful, we need to give it meaning ourselves. So how do we give it meaning? The key is to experience life and feel it.
Our life experiences are composed of fragmented experiences. Sensation is the reflection of experience, it is our own projection of this world; sensitivity is the range of our own reflection or projection of this world.
The world's experiences are complex and vast. The so-called projection ability is the range circled out with our own perspective as the center, the projection radius, which is what we can perceive in the world.
Cultivating knowledge ensures that cognition is not distorted and sees the essence of things and gives them value; while cultivating sensitivity makes our cognition more abundant. Expanding the boundaries of perception allows us to experience more, deeper, or even seemingly unimaginable things. Raising our perspective has nothing to do with experience. The higher the perspective, the farther the boundaries of the world we can experience.
The value of our existence is determined by establishing this center, and the meaning of being alive is to expand this boundary.
Imagination#
Imagination determines the radiation of perception (extension) of the world.
Uta Hagen, who wrote "Respect for Acting," said, "Talent is highly sensitive, easily hurt, highly perceptive (strong visual, auditory, tactile, sensory, and taste organs), lively imagination, comprehension of reality, strong desire to convey experienced experience and feelings, and a strong impulse to let everything about oneself be heard and seen." The script bible "Story" also emphasizes that playwrights must have "perceptiveness" and "extraordinary imagination."
Some time ago, I came across an interesting comic book called "Life Montage." The author visualizes the imagined world from her perspective and shares it with us in the real world.
In the eyes of those who cannot hear music, dancers are all crazy. But dancers know the rhythm of life, and they understand that to counter the absurdity and emptiness of life, they must turn life itself into an interesting adventure.
Imagination can bring us a world that cannot be experienced in the real world. It determines the radiation of our perception of the world and can expand the extension of the world.
Live Seriously and Positively#
Lastly, and most importantly, we need to have a positive attitude towards life—live seriously.
I once bought a comic book called "The Alligator Will Die in 100 Days." On the first page, the author decided that the alligator protagonist in the book would die in 100 days. We, the readers, know, but the alligator in the book doesn't know. The author draws a picture every day for the remaining days of the alligator, describing its daily life. We can see that its daily life is extremely ordinary.
Perhaps everyone is like the alligator, and will eventually leave in 100 days, coming and going by chance. It seems absurd and uncontrollable, but if we realize that life has an end, we will work harder to develop life in a good direction. When we know that everyone has an end, we should live seriously every day.
I particularly like a peaceful life because it allows me to focus more seriously. I used to be anxious and restless when preparing for the postgraduate entrance examination because I had to do an internship while preparing for the exam in a different field. But one day, after teaching a class to elementary school students, I sat under the shade of a tree in the elementary school playground, listening to the reading voices from the classroom, and reading the text of "Zhuangzi." Suddenly, I felt a kind of happiness. The quiet atmosphere of reading and the mysterious realm of the world made me forget the chaotic and noisy life. At that moment, I felt that life still had such a complete and beautiful realm. Even today, I still miss that period of time when I was preparing for the exam.
In the window of the Xixi Bookstore, I once saw a sentence, "Life is a pure flame, and we exist by relying on the invisible sun in our hearts." But I prefer the second half of it, "Life is a series of happy moments, and we exist not only for survival." Everyone is trapped in loneliness but acts recklessly, with a free and unrestrained spirit, carefree and uninhibited. I think, as long as you see through the disguise of this world, the world will belong to you.
As long as we live seriously, everything will be enough. I wish you in front of the screen can also live this life with hope and seriousness.