Friday, August 1, 2014
Do you assume you have the right to exist? I think many people assume (perhaps without giving it much conscious thought) that their very existence already answers the question. Indeed, if I am already alive doesn't that somehow prove I have the right to be alive? Wouldn't I not exist if I wasn't meant to be?
An interesting piece in the New York Times appeared over the recent 4th of July holiday. The thoughts contained therein reminded me of some of my own insights I came to during the time I was a graduate student of Naropa University in Oakland, California. I came to the conclusion that my life, like many of our lives, would seem to be a cosmic accident. Consider, if you will, the number of events that had to take place for you to have come into being. Your parents had to meet. And they had to conceive you at the exact time they did. And your parents' parents had to meet. And your grandparents' parents had to meet when they did. The deeper into the past you travel the more people had to come together in just such a way such that you, centuries later, would eventually come into the world. The chances that this would actually happen were astronomically remote.
Now think about the circumstances in which your parents and ancestors lived. Few people alive today (or in the past) were not affected by suffering in some way. War, famine, geopolitical chaos, economic uncertainty and disease have affected our species since the beginning of time. Our ancestors had to make difficult, life changing choices at times. The light and dark moments of their lives were both essential to the unfolding of their life journeys and the subsequent direction of their lives. Without both the light and darkness of our ancestors' life experiences we would in all likelihood never have been born.
This may seem an incredibly philosophical and detached attitude to take about one's existence. By asking my dear readers to ponder the reality of our being alive and the sheer unlikelihood that it came to pass I do not mean to be flippant about life or minimize the loneliness and pain we all may feel in those moments when life seems very dark. Instead I mean to point out that all of what you have experienced was necessary to bring you to the point you are at in your life today. And maybe, just maybe, you are a better person than you might have been precisely because those dark days instilled in you a determination to seek out the light.
I do not believe it is healthy for us to go out and seek darkness and traumatic experience. There have been plenty of people throughout history who have mistaken the teachings of individuals such as Jesus as inviting them to live lives of such self-abnegation and isolation from the world at large that they go on to live lives in which they somehow take pleasure in their deprivations to such a point that it becomes genuinely neurotic. I do not believe it is ever the life purpose of any one human being to needlessly suffer. And yet we can transmute our suffering into something of benefit. In our deprivation we can be reminded of the immense beauty that is in our lives.
I will continue with this topic in a future piece of writing.
Do you assume you have the right to exist? I think many people assume (perhaps without giving it much conscious thought) that their very existence already answers the question. Indeed, if I am already alive doesn't that somehow prove I have the right to be alive? Wouldn't I not exist if I wasn't meant to be?
An interesting piece in the New York Times appeared over the recent 4th of July holiday. The thoughts contained therein reminded me of some of my own insights I came to during the time I was a graduate student of Naropa University in Oakland, California. I came to the conclusion that my life, like many of our lives, would seem to be a cosmic accident. Consider, if you will, the number of events that had to take place for you to have come into being. Your parents had to meet. And they had to conceive you at the exact time they did. And your parents' parents had to meet. And your grandparents' parents had to meet when they did. The deeper into the past you travel the more people had to come together in just such a way such that you, centuries later, would eventually come into the world. The chances that this would actually happen were astronomically remote.
Now think about the circumstances in which your parents and ancestors lived. Few people alive today (or in the past) were not affected by suffering in some way. War, famine, geopolitical chaos, economic uncertainty and disease have affected our species since the beginning of time. Our ancestors had to make difficult, life changing choices at times. The light and dark moments of their lives were both essential to the unfolding of their life journeys and the subsequent direction of their lives. Without both the light and darkness of our ancestors' life experiences we would in all likelihood never have been born.
This may seem an incredibly philosophical and detached attitude to take about one's existence. By asking my dear readers to ponder the reality of our being alive and the sheer unlikelihood that it came to pass I do not mean to be flippant about life or minimize the loneliness and pain we all may feel in those moments when life seems very dark. Instead I mean to point out that all of what you have experienced was necessary to bring you to the point you are at in your life today. And maybe, just maybe, you are a better person than you might have been precisely because those dark days instilled in you a determination to seek out the light.
I do not believe it is healthy for us to go out and seek darkness and traumatic experience. There have been plenty of people throughout history who have mistaken the teachings of individuals such as Jesus as inviting them to live lives of such self-abnegation and isolation from the world at large that they go on to live lives in which they somehow take pleasure in their deprivations to such a point that it becomes genuinely neurotic. I do not believe it is ever the life purpose of any one human being to needlessly suffer. And yet we can transmute our suffering into something of benefit. In our deprivation we can be reminded of the immense beauty that is in our lives.
I will continue with this topic in a future piece of writing.
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