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| Life is not linear but a series of dots. (Source) |
One topic the youth raised was about having lofty goals in life because he didn't want to accept the philosopher's teaching that you should possess the courage to be normal. But by "normal", the philosopher qualified that it doesn't mean you're "incapable". Being normal may mean you're capable but you don't have to flaunt your superiority, he explained.
But still, the youth could not accept that one makes a deliberate choice to be normal. He doesn't think that great men like Napoleon, or Einstein or Martin Luther King accepted being "normal" and more than likely, he said they carried a torch of a great ideal or objective.
This what transpired in their conversation:
PHILOSOPHER: ....When you speak of lofty goals, I am guessing that you have an image of something like a mountain climber aiming for the top.
YOUTH: Yes, that’s right. People, myself included, aim for the top of the mountain.
PHILOSOPHER: ... But if life were climbing a mountain in order to reach the top, then the greater part of life would end up being “en route.” That is to say, one’s “real life” would begin with one’s trek on the mountainside, and the distance one has traveled up until that point would be a “tentative life” led by a “tentative me” ....
Now, suppose you didn’t make it to the mountaintop, what would that mean for your life? With accidents and diseases and the like, people don’t always make it all the way, and mountain climbing itself is fraught with pitfalls and often ends in failure. So one’s life would be interrupted “en route,” with just this “tentative me” leading a “tentative life.” What kind of life would that be?
People who think of life as being like climbing a mountain are treating their own existences as lines.... Do not treat it as a line. Think of life as a series of dots. If you look through a magnifying glass at a solid line drawn with chalk, you will discover that what you thought was a line is actually a series of small dots. Seemingly linear existence is actually a series of dots; in other words, life is a series of moments ....
It is a series of moments called “now.” We can live only in the here and now. Our lives exist only in moments...
The philosopher further expounded -
Think of it this way: Life is a series of moments, which one lives as if one were dancing, right now, around and around each passing instant. And when one happens to survey one’s surroundings, one realizes, I guess I’ve made it this far. Among those who have danced the dance of the violin, there are people who stay the course and become professional musicians. Among those who have danced the dance of the bar examination, there are people who become lawyers. There are people who have danced the dance of writing and become authors. Of course, it also happens that people end up in entirely different places. But none of these lives came to an end “en route.” It is enough if one finds fulfillment in the here and now one is dancing.
The youth then clarified -
YOUTH: It’s enough if one can dance in the now?
PHILOSOPHER: Yes. With dance, it is the dancing itself that is the goal, and no one is concerned with arriving somewhere by doing it. Naturally, it may happen that one arrives somewhere as a result of having danced. Since one is dancing, one does not stay in the same place. But there is no destination.
What kind of goal is the act of going on a journey? Suppose you are going on a journey to Egypt. Would you try to arrive at the Great Pyramid of Giza as efficiently and quickly as possible, and then head straight back home by the shortest route? One would not call that a “journey.” You should be on a journey the moment you step outside your home, and all the moments on the way to your destination should be a journey. Of course, there might be circumstances that prevent you from making it to the pyramid, but that does not mean you didn’t go on a journey. This is “energeial life.”
If the goal of climbing a mountain were to get to the top, that would be a kinetic act. To take it to the extreme, it wouldn’t matter if you went to the mountaintop in a helicopter, stayed there for five minutes or so, and then headed back in the helicopter again. Of course, if you didn’t make it to the mountaintop, that would mean the mountain-climbing expedition was a failure. However, if the goal is mountain climbing itself, and not just getting to the top, one could say it is energeial. In this case, in the end it doesn’t matter whether one makes it to the mountaintop or not.
Wow, that is super loaded and intense! 🤔💡👊
I like the last line - in the end it doesn’t matter whether one makes it to the mountaintop or not. I don't have any mountaintop to climb in the first place. The book had me at "have the courage to be normal." 😂😂😂
The philosopher further explains why life is not linear. It only becomes linear when one adopts the Freudian etiology viewpoint where one sees life as one big story based on cause and effect. One's life is influenced by where and when one was born, his/her childhood, his/her education, his/her employer. And all of these factors would influence what one is and what he/she becomes.
The philosopher points out that the problem with this mindset is one will try to lead a life that is in line with the story and the person may find himself saying “My life is such-and-such, so I have no choice but to live this way, and it’s not because of me—it’s my past, it’s the environment,” and so on.
Bringing up the past is life-lie, an excuse, the philosopher explains, because one can change based on one’s own volition. The life that lies ahead of us is not a straight line, he says, but a completely blank page. There is no storyline that one is expected to follow coz one can create his/her own story.
Here's where the dialogue gets more interesting. The youth asked -
YOUTH: But I don’t have any dreams or objectives in my life. I don’t know what dance to do. My here and now is nothing but utterly useless moments. (Sounds so familiar! Ahem..ahem..😂😂😂 I do have goals but they are not lofty goals. And I do have dreams but they are not the usual big dreams people publicly share that's why I don't openly share them.😂 )
PHILOSOPHER: Not having objectives or the like is fine. Living earnestly here and now is itself a dance. One must not get too serious. Please do not confuse being earnest with being too serious...
Life is always simple, not something that one needs to get too serious about. If one is living each moment earnestly, there is no need to get too serious. And there is another thing I would like you to keep in mind: When one has adopted an energeial viewpoint, life is always complete.
If your life, or mine, for that matter, were to come to an end here and now, it would not do to refer to either of them as unhappy. The life that ends at the age of twenty and the life that ends at ninety are both complete lives, and lives of happiness.
I especially love the last line - The life that ends at the age of twenty and the life that ends at ninety are both complete lives. Beautifully said! 🙌🙌
To cap it all, the philosopher said, "One lives each complete moment like a dance... one doesn't have to compete with anyone and has no use for destinations. As long as you are dancing, you will get somewhere." 🙌
