I've been feeling melancholy and philosophical lately, so here's my contribution on the meaning of life.....
IS THAT ALL THERE IS?
Do you remember the song “Is that all there is?” by Peggy Lee? The link, with lyrics, is below.
I think it captures the mood I've been feeling lately. I'm in my 60’s and I definitely get the feeling that my life is behind me, not ahead. What is there to plan for except a comfortable retirement and how you think you might want to die?
Perhaps I'm only feeling this way because I missed out on having kids, and therefore no grandkids either. I gave up having kids in part due to the influence of a certain cult and the idea that “you only have this brief breath in eternity to go free, you've had countless lifetimes of having kids, how boring! Why would you want to waste THIS lifetime having kids when you can achieve spiritual freedom with Scientology ?” What a crock of shite that turned out to be, right? Of course, I have my mate and my pets, and walks in the forest; they bring some moments of joy. But there is still a feeling of emptiness.
I mentioned not having kids and the other reason for that was, growing up in the 70’s we had pounded into our heads, through media and popular culture, that having so many kids was ruining the planet because of overpopulation and if you cared about the earth, you would have zero or one child, certainly no more than two, bare minimum “replacement level”. A lot of people in my generation agreed with this, so while the First World population started dwindling to below replacement level, Third World populations continued to boom, and now the solution (especially in Europe) to dying cultures is massive immigration from the Third World. But that's a rant for another day.
Back to the subject, is that really ALL there is? I guess it comes down to how you achieve meaning in your life. Are there any real goals worth fighting for, beyond mere survival? Most people are happy to raise their family, enjoy their grandchildren and then fade into obscurity, while trying to leave some legacy for their kids. Others join cults and sacrifice the family, in order to “save the planet” LOL! Well that cult is certainly on the way out.
What about traditional religion? God, Jesus, Heaven and all that stuff? Well I guess some people find meaning there, and they go to their deathbeds thinking Heaven and a perfect life will await them in the clouds with Jesus. Or maybe it's Allah and 72 virgins!
But if you have no children, no religion, no cult, no Big Dream to look forward to, no “Pie in the Sky when you Die”, what is there? Really, what is left?
Is that all there is? Yeah, I guess so.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WNFe4nak-oM
Your post reminded me of this article which gives an “honorable” mention to Scientology but then goes on to quote Cicero about old age. I don’t necessarily agree with the gist of the article but it is an interesting read.
http://www.claremont.org/crb/article/september-song/
In his 1976 essay, “The ‘Me’ Decade and the Third Great Awakening,” Tom Wolfe analyzed an “unprecedented post-World War II American development: the luxury, enjoyed by so many millions of middling folk, of dwelling upon the self.” The postwar economic boom afforded Americans of all classes, Wolfe wrote, the leisure time and income to sculpt their personalities and their very selves—a solipsistic enterprise that was previously reserved for the wealthy. The Esalen Institute’s “encounter sessions” for personality change, the Scientology movement, psychedelic and New Left communes, ecstatic spiritualism and “charismatic Christianity,” feminism, the sexual revolution, “psychological consultation”—all were ultimately devoted to the study and service of “Me.”
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For a richer understanding of the vital contributions that a society’s elders can make, one can turn to Luther College Classics professor Philip Freeman, who recently completed an excellent new translation of Cicero’s dialogue on old age, De Senectute—here retitled How to Grow Old: Ancient Wisdom for the Second Half of Life—that was well-known to American founders like John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.
The first-century B.C. Roman statesman and philosopher composed it during a difficult time both personally and professionally. He went through two divorces in quick succession, his beloved daughter Tullia died, and he was forced out of politics in Rome as his nemesis Julius Caesar assumed dictatorial control. In his early sixties and alone, he could have wallowed in self-pity, or even committed suicide like his friend Cato the Younger. Instead, he threw himself into writing.
Old age, Cicero believed, offered far more advantages than disadvantages. One could finally put aside the arduous struggles of youth—“lust, ambition, strife, quarreling, and other passions”—and return to living “within” one’s soul, by which he meant a devotion “to knowledge and learning.” Anyone who failed to recognize this when they grew old, and became “morose, anxious, ill-tempered, and hard to please,” should blame their character, not their age, Cicero suggests: “Older people who are reasonable, good-tempered, and gracious will bear aging well. Those who are mean-spirited and irritable will be unhappy at every period of their lives.” (Cicero speaks in the dialogue, according to Freeman, through the voice of Cato the Elder who is asked by two younger friends what old age is like.)
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There are four main reasons that people fear old age, Cicero writes: it seemingly deprives us of an active life, weakens us, denies us sensual pleasures, and brings us closer to death. Addressing each in turn, he asserts that great deeds often don’t require strength but rather “wisdom, character, and sober judgment,” qualities that “grow richer as time passes” (members of the Roman Senate were known as senes or “elders”). Leaders like the consul Valerius Corvinus were happier in old age “since his influence was greater and he had fewer responsibilities.” The old have ample opportunities to offer their wisdom to the less experienced, and yet also more time to take up hobbies like farming that can soothe sorrow and instill discipline (Cato includes a somewhat tedious disquisition on the pleasures of farming). Rather than becoming frail, the old can maintain strong minds through the “mental gymnastics” of reading, thinking, writing, and, in the evening, going over everything one has done that day. And the loss of sexual desire is a blessing, not a curse, he insists. “If you don’t long for something, you don’t miss it.”
Death, of course, looms over all of these concerns, but even when contemplating it, the philosopher is quite cheerful. Either our souls are immortal and they happily enter eternity when we die, he says, or they are destroyed, and then we don’t feel anything. The former belief makes him happy, even if it is false, and the latter is of no concern. He is decidedly against nostalgia. The world will change whether we like it or not, and “the past returns no more and the future we cannot know.” And yet, “a man should live on as long as he is able to fulfill his duties and obligations, holding death of no account…. Therefore, old people should not cling greedily to whatever bit of life they have left, nor should they give it up without good reason.”
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What, exactly, are these “duties and obligations”? This is where boomers should really listen up, and where Cicero proves most useful. It is by fulfilling our generational duties, toward those who came before us and those who will come after us, that the old achieve personal happiness and leave a lasting legacy. In another horticultural metaphor, Cato says that the farmer “plants trees for the use of another age” and expresses gratitude to “the immortal gods, who have not only handed down to me these things from my ancestors but also determined that I should pass them on to my descendants.” “What responsibility could be more honorable,” he asks, then leading the young to virtue and “prepar[ing] them for the many duties of life”? There is also the pleasure of convivium or “living together” with friends and neighbors. “[W]hen at home with my neighbors,” Cato says in the dialogue, “I join them every day for a meal where we talk as long into the night as we can about all sorts of things.”
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