This past week has been exhausting. I have multiple
doctor’s note stating because of my spinal surgery,
I am only able to work 32 hours… this past week they
gave me 37 hours…I haven’t worked this many hours in over
10 years and even after some rest, I am still exhausted…
this question of finding meaning and purpose becomes more
relevant in the face of yet another attempt by work to kill me
with excessive work and stress…
I don’t find meaning/purpose in work/job/career… I never have found
any meaning in the lifelong struggle to create profits/money for others while
I get table scraps from the various corporations I have worked for…
now some might get meaning and purpose from work but I suspect what is
really happening is their childhood indoctrinations that work is good and
part of the value of being human is to work hard and keeping our nose to
the grindstone…and other foolish propaganda that only serve our
corporate masters… our working ourselves to death for pennies
and a very slim chance at retirement isn’t worth the effort we put into work…
I know what I speaks of, I am 61 and I have worked for over 40 years
and the only thing I have to show for it is a broken down body…
to think that the ideal of the American dream is some sort of meaning or purpose
is a lie meant to deceive you into slaving for 40 years and get nothing out of it…
the house with a picket fence with two car garage with two kids, a boy and a girl
and a dog name spot… lies meant to deceive you into thinking that is some sort
of goal to achieve… it isn’t…to own a house is a trap, forcing you
to sink deeper and deeper into the nightmare that is the American dream…
to buy into this lie of house, cars, vacation homes, couches, TV…
all meant to get you to spend your life working to afford unnecessary
baubles that don’t count for anything at all…and what do they cost you?
the rest of your life working pointless and meaningless jobs trying to pay
off the American nightmare……. walk away from all that crap…
find meaning and purpose in other things beside the bill of goods that
society and the state offer you…
so how do we find meaning/purpose in life?
I have become aware of how we find meaning and purpose by
events such as the recent super bowl and Valentine’s day for example…
we create an event and we affirm within that event, some meaning or
significance for us…I have a birthday coming up… I am supposed to find
meaning and purpose in that birthday… but the only significance I can find
in turning 61 is, I am old…and the possibilities available to me, has
remarkable been reduced to a scant few…and that is the result of being
old… your possibilities become fewer and fewer as we age……
finding meaning and purpose in those few remaining possibilities is all I have left
in my life…….at some point here, the only remaining possibility left in my life will
be death and I must come to embrace that one final choice when that day comes…
but that day is not today and today, I still have the chance to find meaning
and purpose and possibilities in my life……….
many find their meaning and purpose in their children and grandchildren,
and I have no burning needs that I see in others to continue creation by
having children…and we can call creation just another word for meaning
and purpose…….
the day to day events that we seek meaning and purpose in like birthdays
and holidays like upcoming Easter are not enough, in my humble opinion,
to create meaning and purpose in our lives…
but Kropotkin, you have eliminated every single possibility we might
have to have meaning and possibility in our lives…
I suppose I have… which is to suggest that we can find meaning and purpose
in some other fashion… which is to suggest that we find meaning and
purpose in seeking and fulfilling the possibilities available to us…
I can, at my advance age, seek to fulfill what possibilities are still left to me…
and one such possibility is what I am doing here…which is to explore what it
means to be human… to seek out our possibilities and then fulfill them…
but it is not enough to explain or write out what is possible for me…
I must physically engage in that which is possible for me……
so I read about other people report about what is possible…
Nietzsche wrote a whole slew of books making a report about what is
possible for human beings from his standpoint and Hesse wrote
several books about the possibilities he discovered
and Goethe wrote books about the possibilities he found
and Hume wrote his books about what he thinks are possibilities
available to us human beings and Kant and Spinoza and Plato
and writers like Isaac Asimov and Ray Bradbury and Philip Dick
and Jules Verne all wrote their reports about what is the human
possibilities……. we only have to read those books to see what is
possible for us human beings.
We also have the Russian reports to what is possible in Tolstoy
and Dostoyevsky and Pushkin……
we have many reports as to what is possible for us human beings
to be and to become… being and becoming…….
we only have to take them seriously and act upon those reports left
to us by all the writers and thinkers and philosophers that have left
their reports as to what is possible for us to become…………
being and becoming
in that we can find our meaning and purpose…
Kropotkin