Not surprisingly, the older I get, the more often I'm confronted with deaths of friends and relatives. That comes with the aging territory at some point, a point I've definitely reached at age 76.
Recently a neighbor died who was a few years younger than me. His wife shared an obituary of sorts on Facebook, describing her husband's life — his interests, hobbies, jobs, and such. I pay more attention to these life summaries than I used to, since I've been doing some pondering of what I'd like said about me after I die.
Since I've been an avid writer for most of my life, I'm leaning toward composing my own eulogy, so I can be sure that my Celebration of Life, or whatever the damn thing would be called, hits what I consider the high points of my life.
Idly thinking about this now and then, I've been struck by a fact that I suspect is fairly universal, though I can't be sure about this, one reason it's the subject of this blog post in my hope to get some feedback from others. What's been most meaningful for me usually wasn't very pleasurable.
I find this intriguing given that pleasure is something I seek every day. I want my food to be pleasurable. I want my television watching to be pleasurable. I want my exercise routine to be pleasurable. I want my conversations to be pleasurable. I want my dog walks to be pleasurable.
Yet when I ponder what's been most meaningful in my life, pleasure isn't a quality that comes readily to mind. I'm not saying that I never felt pleasure in doing the things listed below. I did. However, pleasure wasn't what I was seeking when I embarked on these pursuits. It was something deeper than pleasure.
— Caring for and raising my daughter
— Writing three books on behalf of my spiritual organization
— Co-founding a bioethics nonprofit, Oregon Health Decisions
— Achieving a black belt in karate
— Stopping a subdivision that threatened our neighborhood's groundwater
— Working to improve the ten rural acres our house sits on
— Blogging regularly for 22 years
— Meditating every day for 55 years
— Earning a master's degree and completing course requirements for a Ph.D.
Now, I'm not claiming that I deserve any praise for doing these things. I used to feel that I did, but from my current old guy philosophical perspective I recognize that what I've done in my life has been determined by many factors, none of which I can be proud of, since I don't believe in free will.
Everybody, naturally including me, is just doing what they're doing because it is what causes and conditions outside of their control are compelling them to do. Praise and blame for those doings comes easily — I do this all the time — but deep down I strongly believe that such isn't warranted.
So what I'm left with as a defensible philosophical position is how I subjectively feel about what I've done in my life. And like I said, my feeling is that my most meaningful doings weren't particularly pleasurable.
In other words, I didn't do them for the pleasure they brought me. I did them because I had a strong desire to do something difficult that ended up being meaningful to me.
I can't draw any profound conclusions from this. It's just a fact of my life. I can't say that having grasped this fact, now I know what new thing I should do to add more meaning to my life — since my experience is that meaning is a result of doing something difficult, not a reason to do that thing.
What I'm trying to say is that with each of the things I listed above, I didn't have a sense of this will turn out to be deeply meaningful for me when I embarked on doing the thing. The meaning was manufactured in the course of pursuing that activity; it wasn't evident at the outset.
Thus for me, meaning is an unsought for gift from the universe. Meaning isn't something that I can produce on demand. It arrives in its own time, for reasons that I'm mostly clueless about, other than my strong suspicion that meaning arises from the undertaking of a difficult activity.
The pleasurable things in my life are mostly easy to do. Like eating a cookie after I finish a blog post, which I'm headed for now.
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Submission to a truth that is inconvenient and unpleasant has been transformative for me.
But then I take myself out of it, the truth is all that matters. Even my submission was a measure of my distance from that truth.
Public humiliation, failure and loss because of my own actions also has been transformative. I had no where else I go but give up and listen, accept and deal with the fallout as honestly as possible.
My eulogy wouldn’t be a lively stroll through proud moments. Quite the opposite. But if it highlights the truth and the power and peace of living aligned to that truth, submissive to it, in it, then it has purpose. To sacrifice one’s very life for a truth is doing nothing more than paying the price of admission.
No one should cry at my funeral. They should walk away happy for the opportunity they still have to be honest with themselves, turn the corner and do the right thing, with complete kindness and zero ego.
“one reason it’s the subject of this blog post in my hope to get some feedback from others”
Absolutely, Brian. Happy to. 👍
Heh, I’ll let myself go a bit, if I may!
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1. First off, I see you do sometimes, of late, dwell a bit on personal mortality. That’s understandable, death looms for all of us, and only the less sensitive among us can fail to be aware of the man with the scythe looking over our shoulder.
But here’s hoping, and expecting, that in your case the time for actually making use of any of this will be well in the future now, even if it is one day inevitable.
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2. “I’ve been struck by a fact that I suspect is fairly universal, though I can’t be sure about this, one reason it’s the subject of this blog post in my hope to get some feedback from others. What’s been most meaningful for me usually wasn’t very pleasurable.”
That’s a very interesting observation! Is it universal, or at least fairly so? I don’t know, will have to think through this. And I guess one way to do that would be to first clearly define what we mean by “meaningful” — that is, describe in general terms not just with specific instances what it means for something to be “meaningful” to us.
I might have a crack at doing that: but that would only throw light on what *I* see as meaningful. And this is about you, not me.
So, as a starting point for sussing out whether this is a universal thing, this disconnect between pleasure and meaning, maybe you could clearly formulate, generalize, define, what exactly you mean by “meaningful”?
And while you’re at it, maybe you could try to clearly formulate what you think of as “pleasure”? I mean, take mediation: You’ve listed that in your list of meaningfuls. Does it not also give you pleasure? I know it does me, even if not at every single sitting. …Likewise, I would expect that bringing up your daughter cannot but have been a source of a great deal of pleasure, happiness, delight, call it what you will, even if not necessarily every single hour and day of doing that.
So, well, it might be good to clearly formulate what exactly *you* mean when you say “meaningful”, and what *you* mean when you say “pleasure” — rather than me/us doing that, because then this would be about me/us, and not you — and then we could work out if that is a universal thing, the disconnect you suggest between meaning and pleasure.
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3. You’ve listed many things among those that have proven meaningful to you. Obviously your meaning is yours to find: but as far as I am concerned — and I fully expect there’s others as well that think this way — it is your Churchless blog that stands out, among your many legacies. Certainly in terms of the huge amount of effort you’ve put in here over the years, clearly with zero commercial interest driving you, unlike many others that go public with their views via books and blogs: completely a labor of love, the same as your books written for RSSB had been, and, to put it in RSSB/Indic terms, very much an act of Seva. And equally certainly in terms of the impact your blog, taken as a whole, could potentially have, and in at least some case/s demonstrably has had, on others: for instance, I myself have found it the best single resource to base my own seeking for meaning and a sane reasonable understanding of spirituality on.
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4. “meaning is an unsought for gift from the universe.”
Again, a very interesting observation! The observation that meaning cannot be planned for, but will necessary arrive serendipitously.
Is that universal? Again, the starting point to answer that, in your terms, might be for you to clearly formulate (rather than merely provide instances of) what “meaningful” means to you.
(Personally, I’d say that “meaning” probably cannot be manufactured on order, absolutely; but nor is it a fully random thing. We can probably ascertain with a fair degree of confidence, even if not with 100% certitude, what kind of things are likely not to prove meaningful to us, and also what kinds of things actually might end up yielding meaning. Over and above that, serendipities might well present themselves: but within what we already do have in our list of might-try-it-out’s, I think we can indeed hone in with a fairly good likelihood, what might turn out meaningful to us, and what not. …But again, that’s basis *my* ideas of “meaning” not yours, and so essentially about me not you. To base this on *your* sense of meaning, again, let’s start with your formulation of what “meaningful” actually amounts to, to you.)
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5. Finally, two observations about eulogies and legacies. …And let me emphasize that my somewhat different take on these is merely a different take, is all. Meant as feedback, that you asked for, is all, and not even slightly meant, at all, as either criticism or disagreement even. Whatever works for you, always.
(i) Eulogy, epitaph, memory generally: after we’re gone, then these are what *others* harbor of us. It’s just a bit incoherent, to my thinking, to want to curate that ourselves. That’s entirely up to others, isn’t it?
(ii) People do get hung up a lot on legacy, I know. Again, that’s something I …well, don’t relate to overmuch. We’re here now; and when we’re no more, we’ll be no more. Sure, we might want to leave others happy, whom we care about now, and whom we generally think of as deserving of happiness, absolutely. But beyond that, isn’t a legacy just a way to (futilely) attempt to perpetuate our sense of self, that we know will simply dissipate when we’re no more?
(Again, as far as that last point of mine, #5(i) and #5(ii): Absolutely no criticism implied of your views and approach, Brian, or disagreement even when it comes to what works for you! Just, given you asked for feedback, I’ve tried to present *my* thoughts on it, and *my* approach to it, is all.)
After first a quick scan of Brian’s Post, then visiting the comments, I’ve decided to at least acknowledge reading it, with out going in too deeply on how I try to psychoanalyze Brian’s post, considering how my contribution to this “church”, over more years than most of the present commenters here, were either not around, or if so, weren’t commenting. The real “Hard Core” posters, who attracted dozens of attempted rebuttals to their knowing who’s Hot Buttons to press, are seemingly long gone , for lack of interest in regurgitation the same ole, same ole worn out discussions , with out new contributions of new material, which I see as this post by Brian, who now is feeling more like an Elder who has seemingly gotten tired of arguing about who pooped in the punch bowel, and is feeling more about sharing how he is feeling about his mortality, and approaching his End of Life Legacy of how he seemingly desires to be remembered as Brian Hines.
If Brian really is the true Atheist he keeps trying to convince Churchless Church members he is, then , why does it matter how any one remembers him, considering he doesn’t believe in any After Life? But in all of Brian’s blogs , books, and writings, for members who have followed him, he has been involved in many past interests most members here have at least enough to have taken interests in, other wise, they would not be members of this Church.
For me personally, other than Brian and I being American White Elderly males, the only other commonality I have with Brian is, we were both initiated by Master Charan Singh, with Brian a decade ahead of me, with much more physical experience with Charan , Gurinder, and RSSB , the Dera Organization than I have, so in spite of our political and theology differences, I still consider Brian my Elder Brother as Initiates of Charan Singh, which is why I have continued to check in here, and contribute when ever the discussions have less chance of hostilities,
So, in Summary, at 83 in physical age, I am actually Brian’s Elder, and also am thinking of my physical mortality daily, more so, when I am in meditation, 2-3 hours daily, which continues to keep open my wounds of past guilts, of which no matter how many times I pray for forgiveness for the deeds I would like to forget haven done, forgiveness has not yet come. No doubt, similar deeds haunt Brian and all members here.
I DO firmly believe in the After Life, but just am not absoutely certain, where I will go, when I die, or who or where I will project to. During meditations, I often ponder on weather I will have a free will choice of where, or with what type of souls I’d choose to spend my immediate After Life with, while sorting out where I might want to live for Eternity. Now THAT is a consideration we ALL should contemplate and ask our selves,…”Of all the Tribes, and SeCT’s I have been involved with, if given a choice of which to hang out with, in the After Life, Which one would I chose to be with, to live with those of Like Minds and understandings ? Of all Tribes of people I have been involved with, my choice surprising,, ( to some), would not be with Atheists, Christians, or Radha Swami Satsangis, but I would choose to be with Rosicrucians, who have been, and are, the most Philosophical, non-Fundamentalist group of believers, as well as being open minded, and the least hostle to non Initiates or out siders.
Obviously, should I be successful and granted my wish,…I will certainly not meet any Churchless members there!
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Can’t say that meaning or meaningful experiences have played any particular part in my life. I can understand for example that certain signs and symbols such as language convey meanings, but am at a loss to see why we attach meaning or significance to life.
It is said that we are hardwired to seek patterns, purpose, and explanations for the events in our lives. I suppose that can point to a survival reaction or response when assessing natural events or people’s motives and actions. It is not very far removed from assigning supernatural reasons to things. I guess it all comes down to our perceptions and how we habitually interpret life’s happenings.
Apart from our investing things with qualities, essence or meaning, all that remains is emptiness (sorry to bring up a Buddhistic term but it fits). I just don’t see much difference in investing meaning to something and to investing things with essence.
It’s our human tendency, our habit of aligning everything with our levels of self-importance where we allocate assumed importance to what we think and believe. Undoubtedly, our actions are important and have consequences, but unless they are executed for particular reasons such as intent (or meaning) toward a particular outcome, I see no reason to assign thought created meanings to them.
Haha, interesting POV, Ron!
Not sure if I agree or disagree! That is, I don’t find myself nodding in instinctual, wholehearted agreement, like I did with your response to sant64’s AI the other day. But, on the other hand, I can’t actually pinpoint my exact point of disagreement with what you’ve said.
Cool comment. I’ll turn it over in my mind some more.
A life well lived, well loved and well eaten! No need to journal where you’re going . It’s all in the Akashic records.