A group of friends gathered around the dinner table one evening and discussed the question: "Why do humans live as long as they do?"
One guest speculated that after the children are able to stand on their own two feet there is really no more reason to live.
If the essential reason to live is to procreate then the question, “Why do humans live so long” raises a valid point. Since humans do live long after their offspring have moved on, then one could argue that there is some other purpose to living.
Facing Retirement Causes Fear
It is worthwhile mentioning that the dinner guests were all retired or close to retirement. Having lived busy working lives devoted to paychecks and saving for retirement, the specter of endless choice causes a kind of shudder of realization — there is no real need to do or be any particular thing any more.
Finding Meaning to Life
Neale Donald Walsch writes in Happier Than God that, “Life will always become a larger version of itself.” He points out that life has no intention of ending. There is almost a chuckle in this statement. And it leaves the reader with the sense or knowing that people always have a choice:
- They can hang out on the sidelines OR;
- They can plunge into the game and have some fun.
What Will You Do When You Can Do Anything?
If life is by definition an act of creation — life creating itself — and if plunging into the game means participating in the act of creation, then opening up to all possibilities is perhaps the most ravishing gift you can give yourself.
The question of, “What will you do when you can do anything?” is a delicious question. And it can tap right into the heart of what stops a person from living life fully.
- It is a daring question — Does it bring up fear of risk?
- It is an open-ended question — Does it bring up fear of the unknown?
- It is an exciting question — Does it bring up a sense of exposure and the fear of failure?
- It is a permission question — Does it reveal any unspoken rules?
The Necessities of Life
The prime motive driving most peoples’ lives is to do what needs to be done to provide shelter and food for the family and raise the young so that they can, in turn, provide food and shelter for their young. This can be a good life as is illustrated in the recent Canadian film The Necessities of Life. For some people, it brings great joy and a sense of fulfillment. For some it isn’t enough. They want more.
What Makes A Good Life?
James W. Strutt, the Canadian post-modernist architect whose geometric inquiry is still inspiring young minds, was asked what makes a good life. Right away he answered, to live creatively because creativity is the expression of self that is generative. In other words, creativity recreates itself. Creativity is life.
The group of friends around the dinner table concluded that living means finding out who you really are and when you have accomplished that, then doing everything in your power to live a life that expresses who you are — it seems to be a guarantee to living an extraordinary life.
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