Life: What I Know Thus Far

Courtesy Lovetpd.com

Now I’m newly 19 years old so by no means do I think I have the “secret to life”, “the meaning to life” if you ask most people I’ve barely lived yet. But what I do know through experience, and through a class I took that was able to contextualize something I always thought, there is no MEANING to life, but there are ways to live a MEANINGFUL life.

     1)      Have goals, but those goals shouldn’t be finite.

         What we think is going to happen, never actually happens, or happens the way we think it will happen. I always go back to the example of wining state because to me that was one, if not the, most successful moments of my life thus far. All of my senior year that’s all I thought about, it wasn’t a matter of if, but when. And while I did achieve that goal it wasn’t pure joy, but relief that was the first thing to enter my mind. I was just amazed and relieved that it happened, winning didn’t feel the way I had visualized countless times over in my head. I think we should have goals, but I think the way we envision these goals happening needs to be more open. It’s good to put your energy into achieving something, but most times things don’t happen in accordance to the plan or the way we envision it in our mind, and we need to become more aware and okay of that.

     2)      Change

         Varying things up is what keeps life interesting. As we get older there aren’t that many new things to experience. We aren’t the year old kid fascinated to just be climbing and sliding down stairs. Children get excited over the stupidest simplest things. On a day to day basis we won’t experience many novel things, so I think we have to change it up. Whether it’s on a large scale like moving, traveling, new career/life paths or a small scale like different routes to get somewhere, or new restaurants, or a new genre of music varying up the daily schedule only enriches life.

    3)      Leave where you’re from

         Whether it is forever to a new continent, or to a new state for a year, you need to experience different types of people. We all kind of live in little bubbles. New York isn't fully representative of America, and Iowa isn’t fully representative of America, but they are the USA (and if you aren’t from the US I’m basically talking about a big city in comparison to a farm town). You need to leave your pocket of the world and see how other people live whether it’s within your country or another country. I think just interacting with different ways of life, different types of people can only enriches yours. You start to see how alike people are in all of their differences, and it makes you just think and view the world in a different way.

    4)      Don’t run

         You going to New York will not make you happy, it will probably just make you broke. It’s great to want to move to LA to be an actor, it doesn’t make sense to do that in small town USA, you won’t get very far. However, you can put in the basics in small town USA, you can do theater in high school or college, and take acting and speech classes, teach classes to kids, hone your craft. And then when you’ve put in some of the basic work you go to LA. Many many people think going to a different place will make them happy, when it is something within themselves they have to fix to become happy. And beyond that going to another place won’t solve your problems. Places don’t make us happy, I think WE make our OWN SELVES happy. I don’t view happiness as a destination either, I view it more of as an emotion. Something that comes and goes, more of a choice. People and places can help bring us happiness, but all of that has to start from within first.

    5)      Exercise, meditation, prayer, yoga, religion

         I can’t tell you which one of these works, I can’t tell you if any of these will work for you. What I do know though are there are things we do that can center us, and from that center we can tap into different aspects of thought and get to deeper understandings. I meditate every single day, and it’s just recently where I’ve become methodical about it. It used to be something I just kind of did here and there. And in doing so my mind clears and I am able to see things and think about things differently. The same thing happens after a SOLO workout. I jam out to my playlist for that hour or two when I’m sweating, and then afterwards just walk around. If I’m at the track I just look at the sky, If I’m at the gym I walk home. And in those moments I hear things and they illicit certain thoughts that make me understand something about life and nature I never would have stumbled upon without working out. There are ways to connect to this world, and I think those 5 things above, 1 of them can very easily be that connection point.

Above all, as juvenile as some people may think this is, I think you live a meaningful life by having fun. By just laughing, and smiling and enjoying whatever stage of life you are at.