The Art of Living a Meaningless Existence: Ideas from Philosophy That Change the Way You Think

by Robert Pantano

“Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn’t matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough,” said renowned theoretical physicist Richard Feynman.

Pessimism counterbalances the ridiculously overly optimistic expectations of the culture we live in and helps us adapt out of the deeply detached, unrealistic perspective that we likely formed as children.

It reminds us that things won’t always go our way or always be that nice, but rather, things will go wrong a lot, but despite this, we can still be ok.

We must be pessimistic about life’s conditions in order to face their realities, but we must also be optimistic about our ability to face their realities and form strength, meaning, and experience through them.

In the dirt of life, it is up to us to plant the seeds, watch the flowers grow, and enjoy their beauty, even in spite of the fact that we know that they will die.

that “[t]he only true wisdom is knowing you know nothing.”

Socratic paradox: I know that I know nothing.

Taoism is the idea that everything is in a continual state of flux, ceaselessly changing and adapting. Thus, no single idea or thing is to be attached to. Nothing is to be forced in or out of place. All is to be permitted to run its natural course, subject to the one, constant, unchanging truth: everything changes.

The Four Noble Truths.

The First Noble Truth is that life is fundamentally suffering.

The Second Noble Truth argues that this suffering is a consequence of our desires and attachments.

one can personally overcome and end suffering by eliminating or recalibrating one’s desires and attachments.

Middle Way.

These eight steps include right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration.

In general, life is uncertain, confusing, and paradoxical. As hard as we work against this, it mostly remains

every time we believe we have some understanding or control over life, like water in the palm of the hand, the tighter we squeeze, the more it eludes our grip.

Zen says life is unclear and always changing, at least in terms of words and ideas.

It’s as if we are all swimming or floating down a river in which there are rocks that protrude out of the river’s surface. These rocks represent various things and ideas that might be appealing or seem reasonable to grab a hold of and stop ourselves from going further downriver. However, if we stop to hold onto a rock, we stop moving. The water continues to flow beneath us, but we remain stuck and rigid. Zen suggests that in this, we will begin to experience an increasing pain and suffering that arises from being attached to something and disconnected from the fluid movement of activity happening around us.

Zen and the lesson of the kōans suggest that we should flow with life, ask questions, contemplate them, but not become tricked by any singular idea or answer that might tempt us into a final resolution.

perhaps by considering the lesson of the kōans, the more practical point is to help remind us of the playfulness of most things, see through the contrived, take ourselves a little less seriously, and open ourselves up to the likely paradox of all the ideas, experiences, and people we encounter.

Just like how the center of a tornado is calm with little to no motion, despite it being surrounded by a coil of rapid, violent wind, we can live in the center of the tornado of knowing and unknowing and still remain calm and at ease.

but arguably, absolute freedom of the existential kind, in which one is able to do, feel, and choose what one wants, how and when they see fit without any kind of coercion, restraint, or imposition, is the ideal of freedom that drives the passionate pursuit of all other kinds, and perhaps, all human activity in general.

You are your thoughts and the lineage of every bit of history that they touched to get to you.

You are the words you are reading and the mind that is automatically processing them.

You are the mind that will forget them in some...

You are everything you’ve heard a...

There is nothing wrong with working toward and achieving wealth, fame, or power, but in the Stoic’s mind, these things are merely to be enjoyed if they do work out, but not to be depended on for one’s happiness.

Stoicism argues that the sign of a truly successful person is someone who can be ok without the things he or she typically desires or depends on for comfort.

Wealth, materialistic abundance, fame, and power have no value in a happy life if the person who possesses them has not yet learned to live properly without them.

“We should not, like sheep, follow the herd of creatures in front of us, making our way where others go, not where we ought to go.”

We don’t have much, if any, control over what happens to us, how people see and treat us, or what happens because of what we do, and in the big picture, none of it really matters all that much anyway. And so, we must define our happiness not by what we own or achieve, not by how others see us, not by some bigger picture of life, but by how we think and see our self and live our own life through what we deem virtuous and relevant.

noted faborite quote

and philosopher Cicero, while one still breathes, one still has hope. At least, in some form.

The French Renaissance philosopher and writer Michel de Montaigne wrote, “My life has been full of terrible misfortunes most of which never happened.”

reducing unnecessary worry, rather than removing it entirely. Perhaps by

If we shouldn’t stress over what we can’t change or control outside of ourselves, perhaps at a point, we shouldn’t stress about what we can’t control inside of ourselves either.

It’s not that we have a short time to live but that we waste most of it.

“Men are thrifty in guarding their private property, but as soon as it comes to wasting time, they are most extravagant with the one commodity for which it’s respectable to be greedy,”

we must live not as if we are one of the ones who will live into old age, but rather, one of the ones who might not.

act like you will not live in old age

For Seneca, to hope to live for oneself finally in the future is to wait until it’s too late. Rather, to make the most of time is to make the most of today.

Seneca believed that one should spend their time fulfilling their duties and responsibilities, enjoying any wealth and fortune that might come of them, but not work for the purpose of social status or material success beyond one’s minimal needs, because beyond almost everything else, he argued for allocating as much time as possible to leisure—more specifically, a particular type of well-focused leisure in which one finds tranquility, introspection, and stillness.

The most valuable use of leisure, in his mind, is philosophy—time spent on intellectual reflections in which one recognizes, feels, and observes deeply the life that is being sifted through in each moment.

It seems that, in this, the worthiest use of time is in some sense spending it on reflecting on time itself.

by pointing to the value in the difficulties and sufferings of life, not by denying them, but rather, by accepting and facing up to them.

There is in fact no one-size-fits-all prescription or cheat-sheet or instruction manual to life, and there is likely no ultimate circumstance, idea, or thing that will make life’s uncertainty, pain, and chaos go away.

life can never be completely happy, perfect, or certain.

indeed

On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason,

book to read

The World as Will and Representation, published in 1819.

Schopenhauer finally start to receive any recognition, and only after publishing a book of essays and aphorisms in 1851 would he achieve fame. In 1860, he died at the age of seventy-two.

“The safest way of not being very miserable is not to expect to be very happy,” he wrote.

self-dissatisfaction, self-improvement, and self-rediscovery,