I am quite happy of my job, the way i do it, the possibility of meetings differents people and all, but ... i doubt that it's the real answer for me.
First i am happy to live and being in good health. Recently i was "victim " of a a diagnosis error : they said that i have a cancer and it was wrong. When you start realising that you may lose everything in life (and not just your house, you car or whatever), you pray (god, your holy star, chance, fate or whatever) in order to stay in life. I was happy to have my wish granted, the diagnosis was false (the expert is formal, and the clinical aspect was in favor of a benign lesion). However this type of experience have only a temporary effect, even if some effects are still lasting but to a much smaller extent. But it's not this who brings meaning of my life.
What bring meaning to my life is too achieve goals.
Achieving short times goals, is what essentially what brings my surgery. Transforming the ugly into beauty or the not so ugly brings me happyness, in the same way as an artist, even if i don't consider my self as an artist (because i can't follow freely my imagination).
I love also achieving long times goals, which rely more with long time projects, like buying a house, making it bigger, enhance it ... or the evolution in the way i work.
In fact what brings meaning to my life is to have goals, and what brings me happy is to achieve them.
" Yes, I've promised myself to publish at least one novel before I leave this world, and a good one at that. One novel, take home the Nobel prize and then call it quits.
I wish you luck.
" And you flatter me by calling me friend. I'm flattered. I'll have a hard time coming in to disturb your threads."
Like I said, Der Kopf, sometimes I find your a bit of a challenge but nevertheless your welcome to rattle cages. At least you do so in a civilised & urbane European way.
Speaking of paradigms,
it's the toughest thing in life, shaking off the paradigms we accumulate through life. They stop us from learning , they dull our senses as to what is real, alive, fresh and new.
Plato was right in suggesting thatt they're like invisible shutters that filter out the sun allowing in only certain defracted and weak rays of understanding.
But then I am still striving to keep learning all the time.
I have a completely different response than der Kopf's (although it could actually be the same answer if you think about it).
Nothing brings 'meaning' into my life. My life has meaning unto itself. The act of perceiving myself to be alive is enough to say that my life has meaning. It's kind've a Cartesian way to look at it; I only know of my own existence truly, but that's enough to satisfy.
My answer is the same as der Kopf's in the sense that I didn't answer aquafire's real question, which was, what externalities give your life some purpose. And my answer is none. Life's only meaning comes from within. (and der kopf, if that isn't at all what you meant, I apologize for my misinterpretation).
Its not actually a Cartesian way of looking at it. Descartes would relie on the existence of God which follows (QED) from the Cogito, according to him.
In actuallity you could blame Cartesian Rationality for bringing the uncanny spector of Nihilism into the Western Frame of mind: with the introduction of the 'Rational Subject of the Cogito' we finalize the seperation of what is 'real' from what is really experienced, from lived life. Thus beginning the seperation of the Subject (now seen as purely rational and at a distance from life) from the world . . . thus leaving the world to become a wasteland: "The Wasteland Grows" --Nietszche
What you are saying is actually closer to a form of existentialism: you make the meaning off your life out of the nothingness (in terms of intrinsic meaningfullness) that it is.
As for me: my daughter sure is adding some real wieght to life
but I have always had some form of obscure faith that has given life a profound joy . . . or perhaps its the profound joy of life that leaves a residue that I choose to call faith . . .hmm\
Anyway . . . too often though I am like a robot on auto-pilot, and am carried along by the flow . . . .
but then again that too is part of my strange form of joy . . .
my flippant dictionary (above) answer was a joke too, and it's been haunting me every time i've had either of my two sons on my lap since i wrote it.
i look in their eyes and i just die.....i never thought i could love someone so much it hurts.
when i see a parent that's lost a child or with tragedy impending or narrowly averted it's so easy to empathize and feel their pain and loss.
yes my children bring meaning to my life, i just didn't want to share that part of me with the bozos on this bus (2 grateful dead references in on post!) and i'm only doing so now out of the guilt i felt when i looked into my son's eyes, knowing i'd written that as a joke.
What you are saying is actually closer to a form of existentialism: you make the meaning off your life out of the nothingness (in terms of intrinsic meaningfullness) that it is.
Your correct in this analysis.
Obviously I left enough clues to for you to trace my thinking back to Kierkegaard (1813-1855 ). But I was thinking more along the lines of Edmund Husserl 's ( 1859-1938 ) Phenomenology giving rise to the latter work of Merleau Ponty and the possibility of disolving the mind body gap.
As it turns out, life is even more meaningful than I'd hoped for!
Personally, I will be more than a little despondant if Jobs doesn't announce all dual-core, dual processor machines with 8.7 lb heat sinks.
I have to agree with aquafire's original thoughts. I think what music and photography and writing and other forms of art actually do for me, is that they make me feel more conscious of what actually happens in life. In other words, the NYT or Economist may *inform* me, but when I take the messages from the art that I love, I feel it in some small way helps me to *understand* [the various things I have gone] through over the last 30-odd years.
It's like every great painting or song or writing has some unwavering truth associated with it, and when you find that truth (maybe it's obvious maybe it isn't -- it may in fact not be the same truth for every person), that's sort of where the derivation of meaning comes from for me.
Life is basically one big, discombobulated puzzle...and when we put the pieces for our own puzzles together...all we've really done is found one piece. Start putting all of our pieces together and we've got something there. Question is...what is it? Far out, eh?
" Life is basically one big, discombobulated puzzle...and when we put the pieces for our own puzzles together...all we've really done is found one piece. Start putting all of our pieces together and we've got something there. Question is...what is it? Far out, eh? "
Hmmm reminds me that maybe if the answer doesn't fit the question, it can be that the question is wrong..
I used to know a guy whose job involved writing pithy, thought provoking sayings onto the back of bus tickets.
He held the job for some thirty years until it was taken over by a computer generated system.
As his last parting bus ticket saying he said something
I could say many things - my wife whom I love, my children ditto, my career which I enjoy...heck, even the way that our garden is growing.
But, ultimately, I have to come down on the side of those who say that life has inherent meaning.
I remember a walk on a very cold night between a mixed up young man and his friend who was talking him through. The question was whether, if the world ended right then, would it all still matter. The answer, I realized, was "yes". I have never looked back into despair.
-my last (best) girlfriend (too far for a long-distance thing)
-the one group of friends to which I fit in, well I did not "fit" in but no one in the group did which worked well and I felt apart of something great.
-A good job which I loved and I was respected as someone who knew the job well.
I am job-less and feel useless (get odd work but just to get bye), and life gust keeps getting better.
I have not figured out yet why i live. For existing my 2 theories are 1) my parents had greek condoms and 2) my mum wanted to "save" her marriage. But none explain what's the _meaning_ of the life.
While i'm alive, i could as well do something useful to others. I will never be "free" while i'm alive as i'm always bound to my limited body, so dieing doesn't scare me not even a bit. It's like waking up from a dream that was your life ... been there, done that, and i didn't become a religious freak. So maybe for being back i still should do something and wonder why i'm still alive.
oh yeah . . . and without making art . . . etc . . absolutely a necessity for living!!!
auquafire: have you seen the Piano Player?
Very very powerfull and disturbing film (Polanski is great) but also, in not sentimentalized way, about the passion for life and art . . .
Sorry pfflam, mustav had my welding goggles on to have missed your question.
Short answer, no. But I hope to get it on video.
Actually my mind has been more on wondering what happened to poor old Ena ?
Does anyone know why she got banned?
She seemed harmless, really funny when always leaving threads...exits left.....besides which I can think of at least one or two others who deserved the boot more than her....
Sorry pfflam, mustav had my welding goggles on to have missed your question.
Short answer, no. But I hope to get it on video.
Actually my mind has been more on wondering what happened to poor old Ena ?
Does anyone know why she got banned?
She seemed harmless, really funny when always leaving threads...exits left.....besides which I can think of at least one or two others who deserved the boot more than her....
Comments
First i am happy to live and being in good health. Recently i was "victim " of a a diagnosis error : they said that i have a cancer and it was wrong. When you start realising that you may lose everything in life (and not just your house, you car or whatever), you pray (god, your holy star, chance, fate or whatever) in order to stay in life. I was happy to have my wish granted, the diagnosis was false (the expert is formal, and the clinical aspect was in favor of a benign lesion). However this type of experience have only a temporary effect, even if some effects are still lasting but to a much smaller extent. But it's not this who brings meaning of my life.
What bring meaning to my life is too achieve goals.
Achieving short times goals, is what essentially what brings my surgery. Transforming the ugly into beauty or the not so ugly brings me happyness, in the same way as an artist, even if i don't consider my self as an artist (because i can't follow freely my imagination).
I love also achieving long times goals, which rely more with long time projects, like buying a house, making it bigger, enhance it ... or the evolution in the way i work.
In fact what brings meaning to my life is to have goals, and what brings me happy is to achieve them.
What brings meaning to your life?
I wish you luck.
" And you flatter me by calling me friend. I'm flattered. I'll have a hard time coming in to disturb your threads."
Like I said, Der Kopf, sometimes I find your a bit of a challenge but nevertheless your welcome to rattle cages. At least you do so in a civilised & urbane European way.
Speaking of paradigms,
it's the toughest thing in life, shaking off the paradigms we accumulate through life. They stop us from learning , they dull our senses as to what is real, alive, fresh and new.
Plato was right in suggesting thatt they're like invisible shutters that filter out the sun allowing in only certain defracted and weak rays of understanding.
But then I am still striving to keep learning all the time.
Originally posted by agent302
I have a completely different response than der Kopf's (although it could actually be the same answer if you think about it).
Nothing brings 'meaning' into my life. My life has meaning unto itself. The act of perceiving myself to be alive is enough to say that my life has meaning. It's kind've a Cartesian way to look at it; I only know of my own existence truly, but that's enough to satisfy.
My answer is the same as der Kopf's in the sense that I didn't answer aquafire's real question, which was, what externalities give your life some purpose. And my answer is none. Life's only meaning comes from within. (and der kopf, if that isn't at all what you meant, I apologize for my misinterpretation).
Its not actually a Cartesian way of looking at it. Descartes would relie on the existence of God which follows (QED) from the Cogito, according to him.
In actuallity you could blame Cartesian Rationality for bringing the uncanny spector of Nihilism into the Western Frame of mind: with the introduction of the 'Rational Subject of the Cogito' we finalize the seperation of what is 'real' from what is really experienced, from lived life. Thus beginning the seperation of the Subject (now seen as purely rational and at a distance from life) from the world . . . thus leaving the world to become a wasteland: "The Wasteland Grows" --Nietszche
What you are saying is actually closer to a form of existentialism: you make the meaning off your life out of the nothingness (in terms of intrinsic meaningfullness) that it is.
As for me: my daughter sure is adding some real wieght to life
but I have always had some form of obscure faith that has given life a profound joy . . . or perhaps its the profound joy of life that leaves a residue that I choose to call faith . . .hmm
Anyway . . . too often though I am like a robot on auto-pilot, and am carried along by the flow . . . .
but then again that too is part of my strange form of joy . . .
auquafire: have you seen the Piano Player?
Very very powerfull and disturbing film (Polanski is great) but also, in not sentimentalized way, about the passion for life and art . . .
Originally posted by DiscoCow
....baby laxative brings meaning to life??
Originally posted by ena
....baby laxative brings meaning to life??
It's this stuff called "cocaine". It was a joke.
Nevermind.
and a funny one too . . . both were in fact . . haha!
i look in their eyes and i just die.....i never thought i could love someone so much it hurts.
when i see a parent that's lost a child or with tragedy impending or narrowly averted it's so easy to empathize and feel their pain and loss.
yes my children bring meaning to my life, i just didn't want to share that part of me with the bozos on this bus (2 grateful dead references in on post!) and i'm only doing so now out of the guilt i felt when i looked into my son's eyes, knowing i'd written that as a joke.
plus i feel all the love now......
Originally posted by pfflam
I think the post above yours was also a joke
NO FVCKING WAY!!! GET SERIOUS MAN!
Originally posted by pfflam
and a funny one too . . . both were in fact . . haha!
Oh...bite...me.
What you are saying is actually closer to a form of existentialism: you make the meaning off your life out of the nothingness (in terms of intrinsic meaningfullness) that it is.
Your correct in this analysis.
Obviously I left enough clues to for you to trace my thinking back to Kierkegaard (1813-1855 ). But I was thinking more along the lines of Edmund Husserl 's ( 1859-1938 ) Phenomenology giving rise to the latter work of Merleau Ponty and the possibility of disolving the mind body gap.
But I prefer to paint than express it in words...
My God I am devolving....
Originally posted by shetline
As it turns out, life is even more meaningful than I'd hoped for!
Personally, I will be more than a little despondant if Jobs doesn't announce all dual-core, dual processor machines with 8.7 lb heat sinks.
I have to agree with aquafire's original thoughts. I think what music and photography and writing and other forms of art actually do for me, is that they make me feel more conscious of what actually happens in life. In other words, the NYT or Economist may *inform* me, but when I take the messages from the art that I love, I feel it in some small way helps me to *understand* [the various things I have gone] through over the last 30-odd years.
It's like every great painting or song or writing has some unwavering truth associated with it, and when you find that truth (maybe it's obvious maybe it isn't -- it may in fact not be the same truth for every person), that's sort of where the derivation of meaning comes from for me.
Life is basically one big, discombobulated puzzle...and when we put the pieces for our own puzzles together...all we've really done is found one piece. Start putting all of our pieces together and we've got something there. Question is...what is it? Far out, eh?
Hmmm reminds me that maybe if the answer doesn't fit the question, it can be that the question is wrong..
I used to know a guy whose job involved writing pithy, thought provoking sayings onto the back of bus tickets.
He held the job for some thirty years until it was taken over by a computer generated system.
As his last parting bus ticket saying he said something
like.
" The price of progress is eternal grease "
I could say many things - my wife whom I love, my children ditto, my career which I enjoy...heck, even the way that our garden is growing.
But, ultimately, I have to come down on the side of those who say that life has inherent meaning.
I remember a walk on a very cold night between a mixed up young man and his friend who was talking him through. The question was whether, if the world ended right then, would it all still matter. The answer, I realized, was "yes". I have never looked back into despair.
Just curious.
Nothing.
Why?
I moved away from...
-my last (best) girlfriend (too far for a long-distance thing)
-the one group of friends to which I fit in, well I did not "fit" in but no one in the group did which worked well and I felt apart of something great.
-A good job which I loved and I was respected as someone who knew the job well.
I am job-less and feel useless (get odd work but just to get bye), and life gust keeps getting better.
Oh and I am lonely or so my dreams tell me.
That rant felt good.
While i'm alive, i could as well do something useful to others. I will never be "free" while i'm alive as i'm always bound to my limited body, so dieing doesn't scare me not even a bit. It's like waking up from a dream that was your life ... been there, done that, and i didn't become a religious freak. So maybe for being back i still should do something and wonder why i'm still alive.
Originally posted by pfflam
oh yeah . . . and without making art . . . etc . . absolutely a necessity for living!!!
auquafire: have you seen the Piano Player?
Very very powerfull and disturbing film (Polanski is great) but also, in not sentimentalized way, about the passion for life and art . . .
Sorry pfflam, mustav had my welding goggles on to have missed your question.
Short answer, no. But I hope to get it on video.
Actually my mind has been more on wondering what happened to poor old Ena ?
Does anyone know why she got banned?
She seemed harmless, really funny when always leaving threads...exits left.....besides which I can think of at least one or two others who deserved the boot more than her....
Hope I don't get flamed by the mods for asking.
It's just that I cared for the gurl.
Originally posted by aquafire
Sorry pfflam, mustav had my welding goggles on to have missed your question.
Short answer, no. But I hope to get it on video.
Actually my mind has been more on wondering what happened to poor old Ena ?
Does anyone know why she got banned?
She seemed harmless, really funny when always leaving threads...exits left.....besides which I can think of at least one or two others who deserved the boot more than her....
Hope I don't get flamed by the mods for asking.
It's just that I cared for the gurl.
Was she banned?!?
Was she a she?!?
hunh?!