December 11, 2012

  • The Truth of Life: My Philosophy

    There are three ultimate truths about life:

    1. You were born.
    2. You will die.
    3. You are limited.

    These truths are guarantees; they are unavoidable, and there's nothing that you can do about it. You are limited in your capabilities: no matter how far we travel across the galaxy, no matter how big we build sky scrapers, the ultimate truth is that we are limited. We are caged. We are not free. Though some may believe that the universe is infinite, we are only limited. The things we know now may only be a small fraction of the truth. If the universe is ever expanding, we may never truly understand everything there is to know about the world. We always try to understand how death occurs, how our deaths can be prolonged, but we still die. We may be able to prevent pregnancies and stop pregnancies, but humans are born -- if they weren't, our human civilization would die.

    Not only are you physically caged, but you are mentally caged -- you put yourself in a cage, throw away the key, all because of your illusion of truth. The illusion is, of course, what you find to be "the meaning of life." You might grow up believing that you were set on this Earth for a purpose: perhaps you're motivated to earn money, raise a family, donate to charity, build cars, or whatever it is you find to be "the reason" why you are here. However, there is no meaning: you were born because you were born, you will die because you will die, and you are limited because you are limited compared to the universe. In a way, the reason why you are here is because you will die. You might also believe that living according to your pursuit of your "meaning of life" is considered "success." You may feel that in order to be happy, you must be successful; you may feel that in order to feel alive, you must be happy.

    You may feel that living is something that is achieved through success, rather than the fact that you are alive. However, if you are alive...you were born, and you're not dead. Right now, you're simply transitioning from one truth to the other. As a result, your life is confined through a beginning and end -- a inevitable limitation. Will you grow up to be successful in business? Will you be homeless? Will you be able to produce offspring? Will you be able to save someone's life when the opportunity arises? There are no guarantees in life. No matter how hard you work, no matter how much you learn, you will die just like everybody else.

    In between your transition into death, you will be micro-transitioning through stages:

    1. When you are born, you will prepare to learn.
    2. While you learn, you will prepare to work.
    3. While you work, you will prepare to die.

    Ultimately, everything you do from your birth to your death is you are preparing to die. That is life: you are born to die. Everything in between is irrelevant. Your boss cannot prevent death, your money cannot prevent death, your exercise cannot prevent death because death is one of the ultimate truths; you will die either now or later.

    We once believe that the Earth was the center of the universe; even though we may only be a small fraction of the Universe, we are still important to ourselves. The most important person in our lives is ourselves because we were born ourselves, and we will die ourselves. The only person you will ever fully understand is yourself. No one will always understand everything you say or do because you are yourself. You are alone in your world. You may find yourself asking for understanding, but sometimes your tears will drop to the floor and melt just like your illusion of truth. Ultimately, you can only help yourself.

    That's the general idea of my philosophy, something I've had real trouble getting over the past year or so. It's going to be a real challenge for me to actually care about my future, but I'm gonna try...for what it's worth. Don't know what I'll be doing, but I'm just gonna wing it. Kathleen gave me some ideas on start, so I'm just gonna look for a direction and shoot for it...even though I know I won't feel confident that I'm going to stay on that path. We shall see though...