Live It. And Dream Some More

I always feel the pressure that I gotta be somewhere, I gotta do something, I gotta be somebody. Being goal-driven, there’s always the sense that something, when it is finally achieved, will provide a lasting satisfaction.

Maybe I am kidding myself. Maybe it doesn’t make sense to think of the good life like some Platonic ideal. Life should be let lived. Let it grow, organically, unexpectedly, but not according to some idea of perfection.

Maybe life isn’t about being content. Maybe another idea of good life is one of endless restlessness, unquenchable desires. To desire life so much, so deeply, so intensely, every waking moment, and then dream some more of it at night…

The idea that there could be a perfection of being where I could be free of worries, longings, sadness, hopes, wants, regrets, is intellectually seductive. That wonderful illusion of coherency comes only at the expense of ignoring life.

I am watching a lecture series on Nietzsche’s philosophy. Every lecture I receive something wonderfully life-affirming. Lecture 7 was concluded thusly,

Schopenhauer ultimately seems to think that meaning, purpose, is to be found in a kind of rationality. That’s what Kant thought. Nevertheless, what Nietzsche points out, and I think very powerfully, is that the meaning of life is to be found not in reason, not in rationality, not in some calculation, much less in theology, but the meaning of life is to be found in the passions, that it’s creativity, it’s being devoted to causes, it’s being dedicated to something – another person, a project, an art. That’s what gives life meaning. And so pessimism is overcome as the aesthetic phenomenon, not as a reason, not as a rational enterprise, but, rather, by something you really care about, something you feel deeply passionate about. – Robert Soloman

Rather than seeking perfection, I could see life as a dynamic process, continuously unfolding. It is music, and we all dance to it.

Meaning isn’t some ghostly Platonic gift. God is dead, and soon enough, we will all be dead. What Meanings are to be found in the ruins of religions and philosophy? Meaningfulness is a feeling. It comes right out of living.

If your life burned well, poetry is just the ash. – Leonard Cohen

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