By Mary Jaksch
Do you sometimes wonder what the purpose of life is? If you are not sure, you may be looking at life the wrong way. You may have a view of life as a path. However, there is another way to see life. Read on to find out what that way is.
Let’s first take a look at the conventional way to understand life as a path. Do you see your life as a path? That’s an image that is often used in the realm of spirituality personal growth. I’m guilty of it myself.
This implies that we are struggling towards a pinnacle. We overcome hardship and climb up and up towards…well, towards what, exactly? In the spiritual realm we might say that we climb towards enlightenment, wisdom, awakening, or…what? In the realm of personal growth we might imagine that we are climbing towards, success, wealth, personal fulfillment, or …what?
We are pulled through life by promises like a donkey by carrots. We are always moving towards that pinnacle. First we go to kindergarten and then we look forward to primary school. We are told how wonderful it will be when we finally go to college. And then to university. Finally, as good citizens we embark on a career, a relationship, maybe a family. It seems that we are at last approaching the pinnacle of our life. (One of our readers, Jonathan Meads, sent me a funny and enlightening cartoon clip that illustrates this. Do have a look at it here.)
What pinnacle? More often than not, the pinnacle turns out to be redundancy, or illness. And then – one day the sun goes behind a cloud – and we die. Just like that.
Now, tell me again – where was that pinnacle? Did I miss it?
The strange thing is that for a long time the pinnacle seems to be in the future. Just out of reach. Then, from one moment to the next, it seems to be in the past. You’re suddenly beyond it. You’re a ‘has-been’. And you can’t quite remember what the pinnacle should have been. All you know is that you’ve missed it.
That’s pretty depressing, isn’t it? But, stop! What if life isn’t a path?
What if life is a dot?
Yes, I said dot.
A dot doesn’t have dimension. There is no before and after. The dot is now. This moment. Now.
What if this moment right now is the pinnacle of our life? What if each moment is the pinnacle? That is, if we actually live it and don’t miss it through dreaming of the future.
What if the smell of fresh ground coffee is the pinnacle? What if the hug at the door as you go to work is the pinnacle?
It would change things, wouldn’t it?
We would focus on what we enjoy, and not on moving up in our career. We would surf more, and dance more, and sing more, and laugh more, and love more, and hug more.
We would feel the wind in our hair. We would watch the moon rise. We would bask in the sun. We would roll in the mud. We would play in the surf.
We would kick up our heels and feel free. Free to be a bit wild. Even zany. We would live with abandon.
We would enjoy that dot. The dot that is life.
Let’s have a conversation:
What do you think? How is your life? Are you on a path or on a dot?
Second photo by Jeff Kubina
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To accept everything and anything that is thrown your way.Take the good with the bad.
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I like your way of asking this old question! So many ways to ask what the meaning of life is! And so many possible answers..
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I love it. From now on I will live in the dot.
Enjoying going back and reading some of your old posts.
peace.
j
Jack Woodyards last blog post..The Fool’s Workshop: The next week
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one time I started a painting… it still sits at the bottom of a drawer I think…
the idea was that the physical space occupied by “me” was not in fact what is called in art, “positive space,” that is, it was not the body that was full. I felt that I could feel the opposite, that where my body began was the point where all else ended, that I was in fact purely empty, a scintillation, a chimera, dependent on the arrival of an infinity of energies on spectrum across all ranges of energy, which simultaneously arrived to points infinitesimally small and — stopped there…
in this way, I can relate to your metaphor, but as a literal experience, feeling my dotness as emptiness, tickled by rays emanating from everywhen and where… they dance all around these holes and the holes move across time and space according to their dance…
because of this I no longer wonder about the meaning of “my life” because I do not feel that “I” have a life, but that life has me.
finnertys last blog post..Paris’ Calling – Parisian Apocalypse by Nineteen74
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The comic Steven Wright said in his short film “Once I didn’t exist; now I do, and one day I won’t exist again. So I guess I’m just taking a brief break from not existing.” Funny-but also so profound I’m still trying to get my head around it.
So I guess the trick is to decide what you want your short break to be about. Kinda goes with ‘the Meaning of Life’. We get to pick our own ‘meaning’. I think that’s infinitely superior to some pre-ordained agenda. If there was one you probably wouldn’t like it,or at least be a little indignant that you didn’t get to choose it yourself.
I like the dot idea-it puts you in a place of power, the here and now…and that’s the only place where you can start customizing your ‘break’.
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Hi Starbuck!
I love Wright’s quote! Thank you for sharing it with us.
I had to laugh when I read about ‘customizing the break!” Very funny – and very apt.
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i like this dot idea, because then–well, this is hard to put in words: It’s always it. It’s never not it. Everything is always it, right now and then, still, again right now, it’s it.
thanks for this
steve
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I love it…I am the DOT and the DOT is me…
thanks,
Carla
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But is this practical?
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http://www.dalailama.com/messages/compassion
Discussion by Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, on “Compassion and the Individual”, “The Purpose of Life”.
Personally I find it more instructive to view the question as the purpose of life rather than the meaning of life.
I have enjoyed this site and discussion. Thank you Mary for that.
Phil
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Very interesting!. . . it’s still sinking in.
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If life is simply a dot, this moment or just now, and if we happen to be always dissatisfied with what we are now and thus look backward to rosy past memories or forward to a more positive future; then we’d better think of life as a highway: the coward – like me- withdraw into the past and the strong-willed move ahead and never return.
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We do not have to choose either the path or the dot. The mere concept of choosing between something and something else restricts us. Some time ago I came across a man that said that life is both a way and a dot. Life is just walking. Now. At this moment. Never stopping on the way, no matter where it leads. And the purpose does not matter. Because to be on the way does not mean staying on one place, encapsulated. It’s just means moving. Any moment. Any now.
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” No matter where it leads”?! are we just tramps? Does this mean that my choice to live in the past and to move backward is not a negative choice in so far as I do not stop? Well, you might be right. I am making a choice and I am sticking to it anyway.
would you please write a reply about my comments upon your article “from tragedy to triumph”. I need somebody to help me reason out things.
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Hela, you will know that you are moving when you do not just state the logical conclusion that sticking to the past means staying on one place. Only when you you DO something out of it, then you might say that you on the way… Anyway, good luck!
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It seems to me that trying to understand the purpose of life is unproductive. It’s even more unproductive to expect someone else to tell us that making ourselves “second-hand human beings”, as if life’s insights can be borrowed from someone else.
The more i think about it, the more I feel life and its purpose are unknowable. It is like a fish trying to understand water. If water is all a fish knows, how can it “understand” it?
Why would anyone who experiences life as “dots” would reflect on it? Reflecting on it is the same as not experiencing it as a dot but as path.
I may be wrong here, but it appears to me that if someone tries to reflect if they are happy, they are not. If they raise the issue about the meaning of life, they don’t know the meaning of life. If they try to figure out whether life should be lived as a dot or as a path, they are not living life as a dot. Because if life and its meaning become one, if life and happiness become one and if one’s path is the dot, who is making the distinction? Who is answering the question?
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I absolutely love this post. I’m constantly questioning am I on the right path, and often I come back to the same conclustion which is to “LIVE IN THE NOW (or the MOMENT)”. For years I’ve been looking for my path which I believe has made me lose a lot of precious “dot” time.
I’m in the middle of starting my own blog because I am someone who is always in search of meaning and in a state of constant thinking. This can be both benefical and overwhelming at times. I know there are many like me always thinking and challenging what it’s all about! It’s our thoughts that make us who we are, and the journey to making those thoughts more positive and less draining is the challenge.
Thank you for this post. It truly makes things more clear.
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