A graphic that’s been making the rounds of the Net has been much on my mind lately:
That’s awfully good advice. I’d say those practices are necessary for long-term health and comfort in one’s body. But his body’s needs aren’t the only ones a man must meet if he’s to have a complete sense of well-being.
A man is not his body alone. His soul has requirements of its own, above and apart from what’s required for physical health. Even a hard-core materialist will have a sense of this. He might use the term fulfillment rather than anything that smacks of the mystical, but the sense of needs that transcend the physical will be there even so.
(“Fulfillment” had its heyday back in the Seventies. We don’t hear it as much these days. Nevertheless, it’s on a lot of minds, especially with the rise of the tradwife evangelists and the furor they’ve evoked among militant feminists.)
Each of us needs a sense that he’s doing – or done – something worthwhile with his time on Earth. Without that, physical health and fitness are mere baubles that will be buried alongside you.
That may be a strange thing to have on one’s mind at 5:00 AM EDT, but you know me, Gentle Reader.
What’s required to feel that you’re doing, or have done, something worthwhile? Are there life paths that greatly improve the chance that you’ll sincerely believe it?
That is one hell of a long-term study, Gentle Reader. It goes back to Socrates and Aristotle. The arguments over it have never ceased. They probably never will.
Aristotle, for all his brilliance, had to approach the subject from the back end: happiness. He sensed that the traditional virtues were connected to happiness, and prescribed them emphatically. Even so, his argument was teleological: i.e., that living a virtuous life will make you happy. It left open the question: what if you live a virtuous life from cradle to grave, but find that you’re not happy? And indeed, there have been men whose lives have been absolute paragons, but have been unhappy throughout.
This is not an argument for eschewing the virtues. It’s merely a demonstration that teleological arguments are always vulnerable to a teleological challenge. You may labor diligently for many decades at cultivating and practicing the virtues, yet not attain happiness.
Time gives no refunds.
I’m not about to claim that I have the answer. This is an early-morning ramble from an old man, Gentle Reader. Don’t read too much into it. But it does suggest something about what direction would be most profitable to follow.
Happiness and the sense of a life well lived don’t have to be regarded as prizes awarded solely at the conclusion of life. They can be immediate: concomitants of the awareness that at this moment in time, you’re doing what you ought to be doing, and doing it right.
I’d hope that every man has such moments. They may not last long, but they can bring a sense of purpose fulfilled: “I was there and I did my job,” whatever “my job” might be. They do something else, too: they speak to the desire for meaning that each of us feels: the yearning to believe, sincerely, that life is not a purposeless accident. That’s not a need that can be satisfied by any physical nutrient.
I may return to this later on. For the moment, I need more coffee. No, it’s not sufficient, but it is necessary. Thank You, God.
2 comments:
That unspecified thing that will bring, not necessarily happiness, but fulfillment, is PURPOSE.
Many have pursued a life of purpose. Two examples I can think of that were often unhappy, even, at times, miserable, were John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.
Both found that their time in the Presidency was filled with stress and turmoil. They endured much criticism from both the public and their political peers.
By the time they left office, they were heartedly sick of the job.
Both retired to their lands and tried to lose themselves in rebuilding their property, and getting it on a profitable basis.
Both largely failed in those endeavors. They lost family, friends, and connections to those in the federal government and national politics in which they had been so enmeshed for so long.
Their lives after office were something of a disappointment.
And, yet, their legacy of service to the country, their PURPOSE, endures. For a time, the Left made it their mission to destroy that heritage. Recent events may have stopped that, for now.
The better questions are:
What is YOUR purpose for existing? What are you doing to fulfill that?
Purpose without further qualification is insufficient. Neither of us would admire a man whose lifelong purpose is to build a 1:1 scale replica of Notre Dame Cathedral entirely out of toothpicks. Dedication is part of the answer, but dedication to what? What purposes are worthy enough to give meaning to a life?
The average man makes a family, produces offspring, and provides for and protects them. That's meaningful, even if it's "ordinary." But that toothpick cathedral...? I'd rather visit the biggest ball of twine in Minnesota.
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