What is a Life Worth Living?

Where should we be aiming at?

A reasonable answer to that question can be: "A life where I pursued my passion/my life's task". Reasonable follow-up questions to that are:

• "What if I don't know what my true passion is?"
• "What if I've come to realize I don't have a passion?"

I struggled with these questions myself. The problem? This is all too vague. I really wanted to get something actionable, something I could start doing immediately.

If you want to dig deeper into what's up with passion, I highly recommend the following video from Dr. K (aka. HealthyGamerGG). If you don't have the time to watch the whole video, people have written very useful comments with the summary.

I think the Reddit post covered in the video is spot on; right to the heart of the question/problem. I recommend you read it; sometimes it's even difficult to utter the right questions that will get us to what we are actually looking for.

What Dr. K mentions is very good and well, but I still felt like I was ruminating through the ideas instead of getting somewhere actionable. It wasn't until I watched the following video that something clicked for me:

I love the 2 actionable steps it provides, Inspired by Bl. Fulton Sheen (The Philosophy of Life). Sheen offers two solutions to what he calls The Anxiety of Life:

1. Go out and help someone, today: Help my neighbor. Who's my neighbor? Anyone near me who's suffering: the poor, the lonely, the sick, the stressed-out, the sad, the broken, the beaten down, the depressed, the tired, the hungry, the addicted, the lost, the hurting. Basically, we're all the neighbor.
2. Be open.

Step #1 felt a little bit unclear to me. Until one day it became most reasonable to me that the purpose of our lives is to be happy. It's just that happiness is not straightforward. And thus we are prone to confusing it with other things. Happiness is not pleasure, hedonism, experiences, sacrifice nor excessiveness. Happiness is not a place, happiness is a direction. Happiness is not a goal, happiness is a path. And the catch is that just doing things for ourselves generally won't make us happy. Because of all these reasons, I have lately become very interested in the formal study of happiness. For a very long time, I actually didn't know that studying happiness was a thing. Perhaps you didn't know that either. But the more I experience and pay attention in life, the more I conclude that what life is about is moving our collective humanity into the path that is happiness.

Admittedly, I don't yet comprehend fully how to action step #2. I would ask: "Be open... but open to what?". So far I think it means that, while doing step #1, we need to let life surprise and inspire us. Citing the video:

Purpose is not something we rationalize or intellectualize or figure out by just thinking about it really really hard. It's something we do. And when we do, we don't find purpose, purpose finds us.

I take this step #2 as this other individual purpose (besides happiness); the one that people refer to as passion, the one that people try to refer to when there's talk about "following one's passion". And that, perhaps — just as love — this other purpose is not something that can be directly sought after. But something that finds us. This would explain why it's so hard — perhaps impossible — to find.

Overall, I think the steps are spot on; the moments in my life where I've felt furthest away from empty meaninglessness was when I was helping out someone else, either directly or indirectly (and very much concentrated on doing so). But here's the catch: We should treat ourselves as a third person we love and care for too. It's easy to take step #1 and give our all while neglecting ourselves. Dr. Gabor Maté warns us about the dangers of neglecting ourselves (our feelings and emotions) and giving our all to others when he reads us the obituaries of people who died while doing this very same thing:

So here's my take on the actionable way to approach The Anxiety of Life:

First, aim for happiness. Try to make it so that you leave this world a happier place than when you first entered it. But remember that you are also part of this world. Strive to be your best boss. Don't be too hard (or too soft) with yourself. Since you are part of this world, and only you can be closest to yourself, then the first person that you can (and should) move towards happiness is yourself.

Ask yourself: Is there something that's not letting me move on? If so, you need to address that. Healing is a necessary precursor to happiness. If you feel like you don't even know yourself enough, it's probably because of trauma zoning you out of touch with your true self. That's why when recovering from trauma/addiction, it is said you recover your self.

If you feel egoistic/narcissistic when thinking about helping yourself into happiness, then think about helping your true, inner, pure child. For that is "someone else" who deserves happiness just as anybody else. Remember that happiness is not hedonism, pleasure, experience nor excessiveness.

Once you have helped yourself, then begin helping others move into the path of happiness. And while you are doing that, keep your eyes open. Pay attention to what life may be trying to tell you. You may find yet another purpose besides happiness. And at that point, you won't feel empty and without purpose: you'll know exactly what to do.

Now, let's end with actionable advice. What can you do to be happier and move forward more effectively and efficiently? Let's cover that in the next chapter.