December 18, 2021
The worthy life
Year endings inevitably lead to introspection. They lead to resolutions to do better in the next go around. They can trigger some soul searching. An examination, however brief, of some of the big questions. Big questions like what is a good life? How do I live it? What do I need to change myself in order to be worthy of receiving such a privilege? Our time on this planet is precious. So we think. There are lots of ways to spend it well. There are lots of ways to fritter it all away. How can we find a way that fulfills the possibilities of being human for both ourselves and the people we live with? Can we?
Look, we all have attachments and desires. Most of us will hold on to them till the moment our breath leaves our bodies. These things are inevitable until they aren’t. Perhaps a bigger, more useful question than how do I lead a worthy life? is how can I improve the quality of my attachments and desires?
Perhaps I may be called upon to give an account of myself after I die. Perhaps I won’t. Perhaps I will get to come back. Perhaps I won’t. I can’t say with any sort of assurance this world values what the answers are. I have strong hunches. For the moment, I’ll keep them to myself. At some level, these answers don’t matter. Especially if you’re early in your discovery of the Truth with a capital T. For now, it may just be all about making something out of the gift of existence here that we have.
We know there are desires that elevate us. Some of us have converted them into practices. One is the desire for and seeking of wisdom and the reading of spiritual books that elevates us from within rather than degrades us. The Eastern mystics called it Jnana. The crucial skill here is the ability to respect and surrender to the teacher. Another is the desire for and the seeking of harmony with others by serving our families, friends, neighbors, our communities, nations and ultimately the world in an unselfish manner. The crucial skill here is the ability to see people for who they are, understand and support them in living their lives so they feel heard, understood and considered. This they called Karma Yoga. Then there is the desire for stillness as an antidote to the passage of time. To merge the past and the future into ever present now. There is an ancient Indian fable that if it rains when the star Svāti is in the ascendant, a drop of rain that falls into an oyster can transform into a pearl. The oysters know this. So, they come to the surface when that star shines, and wait to catch the precious rain drop. As soon as they catch a drop, the oysters quickly close their shells and dive back down to the bottom of the sea, where they wait patiently for the drop to transform into a pearl. This Hatha Yoga, pure mastery over the body and the mind. And there is Love. This perhaps is the ultimate desire of all desires. It is the desire from which all other desires emerge in a sense. Our desire to commit to a great love, fall in love with great things and commit to them. The pinnacle of such a commitment is the pure ecstatic love for one’s own Creator. For something larger than ourselves. Love for God, Bhakti, may truly be the greatest of our romances.
It’s commitments to these lanes that make up a worthy life. Commitment to a vocation. To our families and friends. To a philosophy or faith. And to a cause. I think we all really do, in some inchoate way, want to be able to say that our lives mattered. That we have lived fully. That we made the most of this astonishing opportunity to live in this amazing world. We have to find the words and the vocabulary and the means in our culture to address these desires and to speak positively about them.
Albert Einstein when he was five or six years old was given a compass by his dad. He noticed that hidden forces in the universe made the compass needle move about. He said, “wow, hidden forces” and spent the rest of his life studying the hidden forces in the universe. The sad thing is not everybody is going to be privileged enough to have a vocation or a life where their soul sings in the work they do. But, if you feel like you have an opportunity to do it, you must look as hard as you can to find it and go for it. Part of the difficulty now is that the bloom is off the rose for many of the so-called noble vocations that used to attract people. I mean, there was a time you could become a doctor or a nurse or a lawyer or a teacher. These were the noble paths. It’s no longer obvious. Also, very few people wind up in a profession and stay there for the rest of their lives. The usual way is try this, try that and let’s see what sticks. I’ve changed my own professional identity a few times in my life. From the inside it seems like one continuous life informed by one continuous concern. I’ve been lucky to have had doors open for me in which I could sort answer the next invitation. I don’t think the world is that way anymore for the younger folks. I don’t envy them at all, at the moment, in finding their way.
Are we happy with our lives? With our marriages? With our jobs? I’ve always found it useful to not think of my life in total but rather as chapters. A stretch of 4 or 7 years is a chapter. What am I going to do with it? I say pick a chapter and go with it. Don't be fearful of life’s discontinuities. If you don’t pick a chapter, there’s a pretty good chance that your life can just go by, day by day, moment by moment. There’s a good chance you’ll come to have regrets about it because you weren’t intentional about it.
The first step is really to be intentional about things. Only then come the other questions. How do I become a better person? What are the virtues I must acquire in order to lead a worthy life? etc etc. All fine topics for another day.
Stay safe. Happy Holidays!