I’ve had a number of thought circulating in my mind for quite some time now about how I’d like to approach life. How to live.
For some context, I’ve spent most of my life feeling disoriented and in limbo. Like I haven’t had an identity to fall back on. I’ve catered to those around me and societal expectations in hopes that I would feel like I belonged. As you might guess, that didn’t work out very well.
I graduated from high school and I started searching for my identity. I had questions and there were no answers anywhere. I read piles of self-help books. I watched more TED Talks than anyone in their right mind should (and as an aside I genuinely think they shouldn’t hand those out so easily). I look for an identity within a purpose. I looked for it within in people. People I love and respected and people I despise. I just wanted anything. Any answers to the void I’ve felt since I was conscious of my own thought.
Because I’ve had these questions a long damn time. One of my earliest memories is me asking my mum why we are here. Here being code for existence. Why do we exist? She brushed it off with a line about god or something. I don’t really blame her because what do you do when a 5 year old asks you a question that humanity, in its entirety, has had no answer to. I’ve been asking the same question, more or less, since then. And after all that searching, you might ask; What do I have to show for it?
Nothing.
Let me explain:
Somewhere along this journey (circa about 2-3 years ago), I experienced what it felt like to be accepted for me. The question you might then ask is what do you mean by that? You’ve just said you didn’t know who you were so how could you have been accepted? I didn’t know who I was but I knew that whoever that was I had been accepted. There was no need to try to be anyone. I felt seen as whoever I chose to be. I felt like I had a choice for the first time ever. I felt like everyday that I woke up and got off my bed, (or didn’t depending on the day :) , I was choosing who I wanted to be.
I think that’s where I started to build my personal philosophy.
It’s about 3AM and here I am writing down all this because I feel like I’m having a Eureka! moment. Where something has fallen into place. Something foundational has been laid and I can’t help but feel excited about it. But that’s a bit too much of an aside.
Over the years of searching, a few concepts and ideals have stuck out to me and are things that I deeply relate to. And just recently did I realise that they can coexist together as one over-arching philosophy.
acceptance
It’s one word. Yet to me now it seems so broad and over-arching. I think the journey started with Memento Mori. It’s latin for remember death. It’s referenced a lot in Stoicism and productivity circles but when I first learned about it I just thought it was a cool and edgy saying in an old language I liked. I’ve remembered it over the years though. Probably because I’ve always been fascinated by death. In particular I’ve been haunted by my fear of it. Earlier when I mentioned asking my mum about why we were here, the precursor question was “What happens after we die?”.
Yeah, I was a handful of a kid. Proud to say that I ask even more questions now.
About a year ago, I had started thinking about my mortality as a result of one of pieces of content I had consumed. I forget what it was at the time but the most important realisation I made at the time was that we have finite lives. “We don’t live forever” is such a common sense thing. Of course you don’t live forever. I don’t think everyone actually gets it though. At least I didn’t. If I die one day then that means that I have a set number of times where I do certain things. One day it’ll be the last time I call a friend, write a poem, watch a movie. I have a limited and unknown number of cries, laughs and panic attacks left. One day in the unknown future I’d have done the last thing I’ll ever do. I don’t know about you but for me that’s scary. It’s genuinely pretty hard to hear.
But then again, it’s beautiful.
If things never ended then provided you lived long enough you’d have seen it all. You’d eventually be bored of your existence. That’s an even scarier thought to me. That if I never died, I’d eventually walk along a hill path while gazing at a sunset and feel nothing. It’d just be another sunset that looks like one I saw a while ago. The unpredictability of life would become an endless cycle of repeating patterns. That sounds more torturous than any depiction of hell I could think of.
So if we can argue that life is beautiful because we only get one relatively brief try then I think it makes sense to go on to believe that you should try to make the best of it. And I don’t mean that in the capitalist, productivity-centred way. I mean that in the idyllic follow your heart kind of way. In the life is a journey so you might as well see the sights kind of way.
I say all of that but it’s hard to do. Understandably so too. Life comes at you in all sorts of ways. If I had to bring up one thing that fully encapsulated uncertainty it’d be our existence. We don’t know why and we have questions about how. We live and things happen to us. Almost always completely out of our sphere of control. We try to provide a sense of stability but it’s all a ruse. Because accepting the uncertainty is hard. Almost unreasonably so. How can we accept that we have no control over whether we live or die. Whether the things or people we love will last. It’s a hit to the ego too because how much more insignificant are we than what we’ve made ourselves out to be.
I can’t say that I’ve mastered accepting uncertainty or anything of the sort. All I can say is that I’ve decided to try. There’s a Japanese concept called Uketamo. It means “I humbly accept with an open heart”. It’s supposed to signify full acceptance. It means accepting the end of certain friendships or that my face/body looks a certain way. It means accepting where I’m at right now. It’s accepting the emotions I feel. All of them not just the “bad” ones. It’s accepting yourself and the reality that you can only control your reactions to the scenarios you find yourself in. It’s a weird realisation too. Because how do we just accept the death of a loved one. How do we just accept that we might never get to hear them laugh or see them smile again. That the world of memories between you two is left for you to carry on. How do we just accept that we might never be good enough to fit in where we feel like we should. We might never be tall enough to play professional basketball. We might never get to see other cultures because we were born into poverty. That most of the shit we wish we could control comes down to luck. It’s cruel but it’s also true.
There’s two quotes that have helped me out. One is from Toni Morrison:
“Don’t let anybody, anybody convince you this is the way the world is and therefore must be. It must be the way it ought to be.”
― Toni Morrison, The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations
And the other is from a conversation between Gandalf and Frodo:
“I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.
"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
These remind me that I should never forget to dream of what can be. But also that I should always try to do what I can. That I should acknowledge the state of things and do whatever I can with the time I have.
Now that I think about it acknowledgment would be a better over-arching word for this philosophy. Acknowledgment of where you stand and the things that are within and also out of your control. This really was quite a rant. But I guess what I’m trying to say is that you’ll die one day, so why not try living?
memento vivere