Unveiling the Meaning of Life With Alan Watts

Welcome to The B612 Bulletin, where each week I will provide 1 question for you to ponder, 2 insights from others, and a deeper dive into some of my thinking on worldly wisdom I've found in my life and through chasing my curiosity. All delivered to you in 6 minutes or less.

The mind of the conscious being is a blessing and a curse.

Consciousness allows for ingenuity, creativity, and great insight.

It also enables us to be the only creatures in existence that live anywhere, but the present.

We worry about the past, and we fret about the future. As we go about our daily tasks, our minds are elsewhere, removed from the present.

"For the animal to be happy it is enough that this moment be enjoyable. But man is hardly satisfied with this at all. He is much more concerned to have enjoyable memories and expectations — especially the latter. With these assured, he can put up with an extremely miserable present. Without this assurance, he can be extremely miserable in the midst of immediate physical pleasure." (Alan W. Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity)

We do ourselves a disservice by removing our minds from the present.

We spend our days and our lives wandering and thinking about happiness. In effect, the more we think about it, the further removed we are from achieving it.

Because the only way to be truly happy is to be present.

"There is no other reality than present reality, so that, even if one were to live for endless ages, to live for the future would be to miss the point everlastingly." (Alan W. Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity)

To let ourselves exist in the eternal now is the purpose of life.

There need be no meaning beyond that or greater than that. The meaning of life does not rest in our pasts, and no more does it live in our futures.

"The meaning and purpose of dancing is the dance. Like music, also, it is fulfilled in each moment of its course. You do not play a sonata in order to reach the final chord, and if the meanings of things were simply in ends, composers would write nothing but finales. It might, however, be observed in passing that the music specially characteristic of our culture is progressive in some respects, and does at times seem to be decidedly on its way to a future climax. But when it gets there, it does not know what to do with itself. Beethoven, Brahms, and Wagner were particularly guilty of working up to colossal climaxes and conclusions, and then blasting away at the same chord over and over again, ruining the moment by being reluctant to leave it." (Alan W. Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity)

The purpose of a dance is not to get to the end of the dance. The purpose is to just dance for the dance itself.

Thus, the same for life. We are not trying to get to the end, to live for some greater end.

The purpose of life is to just live life, presently and fully, for as long as we have.

1 Question to Ponder this Week:

I. What distractions do I let remove me from the present? Perhaps it's your phone (common), or worries about work? Whatever it is, is there some way to not allow it to have dominion over your mind and your life?

2 Insights from Others:

I. "The present: a split second in eternity. Minuscule, transitory, insignificant." (Marcus Aurelius, Meditations)

The present is always fleeting, we must not let it pass us by.

II. "The beginning is always today. There is no tomorrow. By the time we reach tomorrow it has become today. There is no going backward, there is no yesterday. It is only today." (Mary Shelley)

The best time to start anything, no matter what it is, no matter how big or small, is today.