What Gives Your Life Meaning?

Friends.
Music (though not as much as it used to).
Sense of satisfaction from a job well done/perfection in mathematical sense (hard to explain). Definitely not career, but the sense that I'm good at what I do, and that people appreciate it.
Connections, random or deep.
Beauty.

crosspost

If you don't have anything that gives meaning/purpose/whatever to your life, then say so. Otherwise, please provide examples.

Because I can argue the toss all day, saying that life is ultimately meaningless and that meaning is overrated anyway, and it concludes with my wanting to throw myself in front of a train. Which isn't constructive at all.

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0156584468.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

But I think what Kate's getting at is that deep sense of existential solidarity which is only vaguely referred to by "meaning".

Yes. Exactly.

http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/0060921013.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

Is this a different question from 'What stops you deciding that existence is pointless and topping yourself?'

Well, if you want to put it so bluntly, partly, yes. But also, what makes the difference between merely "existing" and actually "living"? What turns your life from a dull grey routine of being a body function machine to something... worthwhile and enjoyable.

like many people if I didn't engage in some creative/artistic activity there'd be a huge hole in life. it's half ego-gratifying self-indulgence in wanting to be praised and respected and made to feel valued by others, and half genuine belief that there's talent to be put to good use in producing works that both you and others can experience and be inspired by or learn from. Reison d'etre I suppose. To consider a life devoid of this, what may be construed as a 'privilege' by some, disturbs me greatly.

Also, other people's projects:

e.g. my life is not complete until I read what Tom E has to say about 'I Know Him So Well' on Popular.

The idea that we ought to leave someplace better than we find it.

Doing a really good bit of writing. Especially if it's not for work or ILX. *Any* other success comes from this.

Not so much getting paid, but getting paid on time.

Atheism. A lot of people are scared of atheists.

An interesting thing becomes cool; a 'cool' thing is never interesting. History can always be interesting.

Socratic dialogue. Oh, and clothes.

It's the balance in life between being merely a spectator or being a participant/performer/competitor. You can't just spend your life as the former, as tossy as all this sounds. I realised this about my life many years back. Too much observation, not enough participation. What do I mean by participation? I suppose avoiding that sense of living vicariously and not doing the things you wish you could do. Actually doing them/what it takes to make them happen. This could mean anything from saving up a load of money and going travelling for a year or two, or spending 18 hours or more a day trying to get your band/movie/art project/dotcom off the ground i.e. following up the thinking by actually doing.

Although I would agree with Suzy in regard to atheism, now I realize that I no longer want to *shove* my ideas in other people's throats. What is more important: whatever gives meaning to their life and whatever makes people happy. Although I don't agree with religion at all, if it makes a person a better/happier human being, then that's more important than whatever is right. (God, that sounds lame-oh, no?)

I would love to include writing and reading but I can't seem to find the time these days. Hopefully that will soon be no longer the case. :-)

the countryside

clouds

going to stuff all the time - a good play, a nice cinema, a club playing my favourite music etc

receiving texts from friends that just say whats happening in their life at that time eg "just eating some cereal", "omg a bus just went past!" etc. i dont get many of these but i wish i did.

talking/thinking about transport

being obsessed with russia

god, or the belief that the "true" nature of everything is infinite and unknowable, illogical and irrational.- that the human race's experience of life or existence is of no more significance than that of ants or lupins

I know! Hence the italics. ;-) There's nothing haha funny about not having a god and still having meaning in your life, in my opinion. Or maybe i don't understand your point... I'm a bit thick these days (hah! *these days*) due to sleep deprivation. It's just very hard to establish a *framework*/value system without resorting to (in my case) catholicism.

I'm not sure I'd adjust so easily as I once thoght to a leisure society where work is done by machines/computers and we become a world of lotus eaters.

i agree re difficulty in enforcing/maintaining a personal framework in the wake of Catholic education. those stubborn bastards! but to be fair that was some might fine disciplining they did...for me at least, maybe i was more susceptible for some reason - wonder why Teh Fear Of God worked on me better than others. maybe something to do with parents splitting up so early on, relative sense of 'abandonment' and vulnerability. not that I was v religious after the age of 11 or so, just reasonably compliant with Authority (obeyed/sympathised with teachers etc.)

hard to explain -- it's a *willing* suspension of disbelief. i suppose that's a bit schizo, but even nihilist philosophers had to get up in the mornings right?

Someone puts it in Christopher Isherwodd's diaries, along the lines of: "The universe has chosen to project part of itself as [Bob Six] in space and time, for reasons best known to itself or even no reason, and will eventually withdraw this projection back into itself."

I remember thinking the Post Office had struck gold with that ad campaign 'saw this and thought of you' - there is nothing that makes me feel so good as receiving mail/email/text of that ilk, however cheesy it may be.

i will remember this next time i get cold called. 8)

Maybe I should start again.

Games. I just couldn't live without them. I think they're loosely connected to the visual art thing, the good ones are in themselves tremendous works of art and design.

Music to some degree, as I've grown older it seems to play less of a part in my life. Ten years ago this question would be answered with a resounding 'Music' and nothing else. I'm listening to mostly nostalgic stuff anyway these days.

Friends would have also been top of the list ten years ago, maybe not so much now but they still keep me going even if I don't see much of them lately. I'd miss them if they were gone.

Too much self-consciousness is a drag, I guess.

Yes and yes!! The point of having a meaningful life is to go out and HAVE IT, not ruminate over it and pick it apart, or at least not in place of having it (I suspect we have a slightly higher-than-average percentage of pick-aparters here, myself included). I'm firmly convinced that the excitement and distraction of ideas, activities, forms of play and learning and engagement that pull me out of myself, are the ONLY way to be. Are you kidding?? I hate my self-conscious self, she's a huge drag: glib and defensive and deeply, deeply boring.

I should start sending "I read a thread on ILX and thought of you..." text messages.
"Start"?!?

i think religion ought to be in there somewhere, but I guess I don't see it as an isolated thing on its own. so i guess partly it goes in level one, because it affects how i relate to others, and partly in level two, because it's beautiful in an intellectual sense.

She's also you, in a way that the things you do aren't.

::runs away quickly::

I'll have what she's having.

I always knew it was the unexamined life that was worth living.

Observe the herd which is grazing beside you. It does not know what yesterday or today is. It springs around, eats, rests, digests, jumps up again, and so from morning to night and from day to day, with its likes and dislikes closely tied to the peg of the moment, and thus neither melancholy nor weary. To witness this is hard for man, because he boasts to himself that his human race is better than the beast and yet looks with jealousy at its happiness. For he wishes only to live like the beast, neither weary nor amid pains, and he wants it in vain, because he does not will it as the animal does. One day the man demands of the beast: "Why do you not talk to me about your happiness and only gaze at me?" The beast wants to answer, too, and say: "That comes about because I always immediately forget what I wanted to say." But by then the beast has already forgotten this reply and remains silent, so that the man wonders on once more.

But he also wonders about himself, that he is not able to learn to forget and that he always hangs onto past things. No matter how far or how fast he runs, this chain runs with him. It is something amazing: the moment, in one sudden motion there, in one sudden motion gone, before nothing, afterwards nothing, nevertheless comes back again as a ghost and disturbs the tranquility of each later moment. A leaf is continuously released from the roll of time, falls out, flutters away—and suddenly flutters back again into the man's lap. For the man says, "I remember," and envies the beast, which immediately forgets and sees each moment really perish, sink back in cloud and night, and vanish forever.

Thus the beast lives unhistorically, for it gets up in the present like a number without any odd fraction left over; it does not know how to play a part, hides nothing, and appears in each moment exactly and entirely what it is. Thus a beast can be nothing other than honest. By contrast, the human being resists the large and ever-increasing burden of the past, which pushes him down or bows him over. It makes his way difficult, like an invisible and dark burden which he can for appearances' sake even deny, and which he is only too happy to deny in his interactions with his peers, in order to awaken their envy. Thus, it moves him, as if he remembered a lost paradise, to see the grazing herd or, something more closely familiar, the child, which does not yet have a past to deny and plays in blissful blindness between the fences of the past and the future. Nonetheless, this game must be upset for the child. He will be summoned all too soon out of his forgetfulness. For he learns to understand the expression "It was," that password with which struggle, suffering, and weariness come over human beings, so as to remind him what his existence basically is—a never completed past tense. If death finally brings the longed for forgetting, it nevertheless thereby destroys present existence and thus impresses its seal on the knowledge that existence is only an uninterrupted living in the past [Gewesensein], something which exists for the purpose of self-denial, self-destruction, and self-contradiction.

If happiness or if, in some sense or other, a reaching out for new happiness is what holds the living onto life and pushes them forward into life, then perhaps no philosopher has more justification than the cynic. For the happiness of the beast, like that of the complete cynic, is the living proof of the rightness of cynicism. The smallest happiness, if only it is uninterrupted and creates happiness, is incomparably more happiness than the greatest which comes only as an episode, as it were, like a mood, as a fantastic interruption between nothing but boredom, cupidity, and deprivation. However, with the smallest and with the greatest good fortune, happiness becomes happiness in the same way: through forgetting or, to express the matter in a more scholarly fashion, through the capacity, for as long as the happiness lasts, to sense things unhistorically.

excerpt Nietzsche On the Use and Abuse of History

Don't be silly. I said, "not in place of having [a life]", not "not at all".

1) Anticipation: Be it for a CD/film/book/comic etc, it's always nice to have something to look forward to. And, of course there is a deeper level of anticipation about achieving some sort of goal. I think it's all wrapped up in the process, I often feel hopelessly lost when something has been done - what's the point of life if there are no loose ends? Make sure you never tie up your loose ends!

2) Creativity: Painting, music - it's great to have creative projects on the go. Though, I guess I care too much about the 'audience', and shy away from being bold about what I create (the "oh, it's not that great"), yet at the same time crave some sort of validation. But still it's better to create than simply consume.

3) Friends/Family: Everyone needs them! They are great!

4) Passing time: A passive activity, but it's nice to watch the world to go by, listen to other peoples conversations and etc.

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0060638508.01._AA240_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

and lately, quite surprisingly:
http://www.pupress.princeton.edu/images/k1105.gif

A couple weeks ago someone posted a photo on a funny thread (don't remember if it was Excelsior or the Noise Board) that made me think of someone I haven't spoken to in literally 9-10 years. I looked up her e-mail address (she's a teacher at the high school we both went to) and sent it to her. She sent back a polite, friendly e-mail. I doubt there will be much more to it, but I enjoyed re-establishing the connection.

dear baby,
remember this? i sure do.

love,
jaymc

Also:

- music that fills me with joy or inspiration or even sadness
- observing beauty in my surroundings, even in a dirty city location (and then wishing I had my camera!)
- humour in all its forms - tv shows, standup comedy, funny writing, ILX joeks, anything that makes me laugh.
- cooking and eating good food.

I used to live for a better world, and I've been profoundly unhappy to feel this give way slowly...

mothra

Want to start a band?

Me too. And sex. Work and sex. Mine is a very Freudian life.