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It appears that the meaning that most effectively sustains life is to be found in the adoption of responsibility.
The
ultimate question of Man is not who we are, but who we could be.
This implies something crucial: no happiness in the absence of responsibility. No valuable and valued goal, no positive emotion.
Your life becomes meaningful in precise proportion to the depths
of the responsibility you are willing to shoulder.
And this is something to deeply consider, if you are concerned with leading a moral and careful life: if you do not object when the transgressions against your conscience are minor, why presume that you will not willfully participate when the transgressions get truly out of hand?
Since the ideologue can place him or herself on the morally correct side of the equation without the genuine effort necessary to do so validly, it is much easier and more immediately gratifying to reduce the problem to something simple and accompany it with an evildoer, who can then be morally
opposed.
A world where only you and people who think like you are good is also a world where you are surrounded by enemies bent on your destruction, who must be fought.
You are likely to be much more clear minded about what is what and who is who and where blame lies once you contemplate the log in your own eye, rather than the speck in your brother’s.
We are directionless, confused, and paralyzed by indecision. We are pulled in all directions by temptations, despite our stated will, and we waste time, procrastinate, and feel terrible about it, but we do not change.
Clear goals limit and simplify the world, as well, reducing uncertainty, anxiety, shame, and the self-devouring physiological forces unleashed by stress.
It has become self-evident to me that many commitments have enduring value: those of character, love, family, friendship, and career foremost among them (and perhaps in that order).
But very often failure is a consequence of insufficient single-mindedness, elaborate but pointless rationalization, and rejection of responsibility. And little good comes of that.
Those who do not choose a direction are lost. It is far better to become something than to remain anything but become nothing.
As it is said, “Man shall not live by bread alone” (Matthew 4:4). That is exactly right. We live by beauty. We live by literature. We live by art. We cannot live without some connection to the divine—and beauty is divine—because
What is the moral of the story? Make yourself colorful, stand out, and the lions will take you down. And the lions are always there.
Many things make life worth living: love, play, courage, gratitude, work, friendship, truth, grace, hope, virtue, and responsibility. But beauty is among the greatest of these.
We have all been petrified by the unknown, even though that seems a contradiction in terms. But the body knows what the mind does not yet grasp.
And let us be appropriately harsh and realistic about our appraisal, instead of pretending we are taking a used car for a test jaunt. Here is what it means: “You will do, for now, and I presume you feel the same way about me. Otherwise we would just get married. But in the name of a common sense that neither of us possesses we are going to reserve
the right to swap each other out for a better option at any point.” And if you do not think that is what living together means—as a fully articulated ethical statement—see if you can formulate something more plausible.
I believe even more deeply that people have the ability to transcend their suffering, psychologically and practically, and to constrain their own malevolence, as well as the evils that characterize the social and the natural worlds.
