Your weekly reminder to return to useful and beautiful thoughts.
Hi!
Does your life have great purpose? Yes? No? Maybe?
Sometimes I really crave meaning. Like, there’s got to be more to life than just getting by.
I even wrote this vague goal last year (after layoff, before cancer):
Clarify what it means for me to live a meaningful life
What’s my purpose, my duty, my commitments, the reasons I get out of bed every day beyond survival. It’s easy to point to my kids, but that can’t be the only thing. Nor can my job (paid work) eclipse my family.
I go back and forth on the validity of this goal.
Why do I think I need this, that it’s a goal worth pursuing? Why must my life have meaning?
At best, I like the idea of making a difference, a contribution to the world.
At worst, I wonder if I’m seeking motivation and meaning outside of me because I haven’t yet found it within.
If I get really hung up and in my head about this stuff, I’ll take a walk on the greenway and look for birds. Why? Because a heron doesn’t struggle to get up in the morning, doesn’t wish life had more meaning. It probably doesn’t even think about being hungry. It just does its bird thing — what it’s called to do.
Am I called to do something? How do I know? What if I don’t know? What then?
At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself:
“I have to go to work — as a human being. What do I have to complain of, if I’m going to do what I was born for — the things I was brought into the world to do? Or is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?”
—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 5.1
I’m going to do an obnoxious thing and quote someone (Ryan Holiday) who is quoting someone else (Marcus Aurelius):
“So you were born to feel nice?” Marcus writes, “Don’t you see the plants, the birds, the ants and spiders and bees going about their individual tasks, putting the world in order, as best they can? And you’re not willing to do your job as a human being?” Stoics are always trying to live according to nature. Our nature as human beings, Marcus argues, is to fulfill our duty—to work. The beauty in this statement is that every creature on earth is doing the same thing. Bees are busy pollinating. Trees are busy giving us oxygen. Cows, horses, and goats alike are fertilizing our soil. The sun is giving us light and life, while the moon takes the night shift. And what are we doing? We can’t even get out of our warm bed.1
On days when I crave meaning (when I think I need it), I remind myself that:
Birds don’t need life to mean something.
But I’m a human, not a bird.
Marcus Aurelius, both a king and a tired human, also had to talk himself out of bed.
Thank you for being here.
Love,
Kate
p.s. Alternatively, maybe the birds DO get up and go to work.
https://dailystoic.com/4-ways-to-wake-up-like-a-stoic/