It’s never when the party is over or even when other guests are leaving. That moment of elegant departure, when you know it’s the perfect time to leave the party. If you’re lucky and persistent, you might be able to discover something of what it is. You do have a part, however minor, in the larger play of life. Soon thereafter, almost all indication that you ever existed will disappear. You will be forgotten soon after you are dead. All achievement, success or failure perceived in life is a complete bare-assed illusion. Life doesn’t care whether you are happy, are in pain or live a long or a short life. Your life has no larger purpose other than possibly to reproduce (and it doesn’t matter much if you don’t, because there are plenty of others who will). You didn’t ask to be here and you’re not sure how you got here. That being the case, I propose the following as a basic primer: you are here. We have often heard the silly plaint that humans unfortunately do not arrive with an instruction manual. So enjoy the ride, while it lasts, and then… back into the pool. That “you” will evaporate as a cloud, with any remaining precipitation falling back into the ocean. That “you” who is so resistant to dying, desperately holding on to a fading life, will not even be there or even care a bit the moment after “you” are finally gone. At that point you might really and completely live! That “You” However, you must be willing to accompany the reaper at a moments notice, look forward with anticipation and delight to that prospect, and be ready to “go” with open heart and arms, without resistance or pretense. However, when that awareness is finally accepted, you could be on your way to a truly full living of life. Death is the inseparable companion of life, whether it’s acknowledged or not. So to act as if we were “free and dead” could also result in being so very much alive! Every sentient being at birth must live with death as an essential aspect of Life. There would be no need to hold back or play safe, because we have already let go of our attachment to life. Already Dead?Ĭonsider the possibility that we are “dead already” and everything about our life is already lost – then, if this was so, we would have nothing to lose by our living. When you can fully embrace the understanding that there is nothing about your life or living that will survive, that there is nothing of supposed human accomplishment that shall survive either, and that the destiny of everything is to be dissolved as a sand castle at high tide - then you have a good beginning point for building a philosophy. It’s the basic existential ground, more basic than accepting even our own death, (because it includes death) but also the lack of purpose, meaning and the impossibility of progress or accomplishment. It seems that the ultimate starting point for any philosophy is the realization that life is inherently futile.
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