I’ve never been quite satisfied with the name of this channel, because, for one thing, the idea of being on a quest for a meaningful life suggests that it’s something you find somewhere. You’re looking for something that you don’t have. And many people would say that a meaningful life is something that you make rather than something that you find somewhere out there. …
So that leads me to wonder, what am I even doing here? So I want to take it back to the beginning of this channel. And one thing that I haven’t mentioned before is that I started this channel, the first video was a week after my father died. And he told me near the end, he said, “It’s OK, I’ve had a great life.” And I was thinking that when I looked at my life, I didn’t really feel that I was living a great life. I had gotten used to just my life being OK, and I was avoiding any horrible situations, I was getting by, but I didn’t really feel a feeling of exaltation at how amazing my life is.
And I remember hearing just some random Youtube video that stuck in my mind, somebody said, “If your life is OK, that’s not good enough. Your life should be awesome.” And I had gotten used to it just being OK, that OK, well, I really have nothing to complain about, because everything’s basically fine, but I would feel a certain kind of… when I saw people who were living an amazing life … I would feel a sense that I was missing out on something. Like I want that feeling of waking up and being excited and energized to go about the day. Which seems like such a basic thing, and yet so many people don’t have that. And so there was a sense of enthusiasm that was missing from my life.
So when I began this channel, it was about finding that, really, finding what is it… how can I change the way I’m living, or learn something, or in whatever way, to reach this kind of a state of really being happy, satisfied with my life. Such a basic thing, but so elusive for so many people.
It seems like so much of our energy is about just getting by, solving problems that get in the way, and just making it through, that there’s often just not a lot of room left for this kind of really real excitement. …
I always thought it’s possible to be energized by our lives overall, and not just these moments of escape. And we’ve all met and heard from people that are living this way. …
And so what I’ve found is that there’s no meaning in life as far as I can see. There’s no formula, there’s no secret, there’s no particular point. And I can see how that can easily lead to a sense of emptiness, nihilism, there’s no point to anything. But it’s also an opportunity. By being alive, we have this opportunity to simply enjoy being alive, whatever that means. We have an opportunity to enjoy the experience of living in this world, this universe, whatever that means. And that basic feeling of being alive, the aliveness: I think that that’s as close as I can think of, as close as I can get to a sense of a meaningful life, a life where I feel alive, I feel the experience and I experience the experience of being alive. And so much of the… if this is a quest, if it is a task, a mission, to undertake to reach this point, it’s not so much something that is found somewhere. It’s already there. It’s already there automatically, because we already are alive. But why don’t we feel that aliveness more? The work of this seems to be to clear away the things that are blocking us, that are interfering with that basic feeling of aliveness. Because so many of… the work of just staying alive, staying safe, staying comfortable, staying away from disaster, and attempting to arrange security so that this continues into the future: that takes so much of our energy and effort that we can easily get lost in that and not put any energy and attention to simply enjoying and appreciating life.
Now, so, of course there’s all the details of what that means. How do we actually live in a way that leaves room, and I would hope a lot of room, to simply appreciate and enjoy life? And that’s why we get into some things like simplifying life, letting go of certain things that we do that take so much of our energy that they take away energy that could be instead used to enjoy life. And all the different thought patterns that can get in our way. These things can keep us in these cycles of thought where it’s just about survival and security and chasing after various objectives that we consider very important. And if we can simplify those things down and only do what we really need to do, and not feel we need to do all these things that we don’t really need to do, then we can open up some space to simply be alive, enjoy it. That’s as simple as it gets. All we can say is… all I can say is I’m alive now. I won’t be alive forever. I am alive now. There’s nothing I really have to do. And so why don’t I just enjoy this experience? And that to me is meaningful living.