A fulfilling life and building a framework for living
Arun Kumar
In my mind’s eye, I keep visiting the moonless nights in St. Croix when we looked at the sky and were dazzled and awed by the sheer number of stars sprinkled in the darkness above. Here in Maryland, living does not offer that privilege. Being here, and working, does bring in the paycheck and the roof above the head. In return, I pay the price of not sensing the vastness in which I live.
Living in the boxes that cities could be, we miss the opportunity of nature making us feel humble. Not confronting the infinite, we miss the privilege to ask ourselves the question, who are we.
While standing on the porch of Leigh’s Leap, what those moonless nights in St. Croix offered was a sense of how expansive space and time are, and within that, how fleeting are the moments of our existence.
The growing realization of my mortality, and yet, not being at ease with the realization has created a dissonance within. A nagging feeling of unease that something is not right. It feels that from the 1000 piece puzzle we bought a couple of days back, a piece has gone missing. Just to be mischievous, perhaps the dog who was at our house for a week swallowed that one piece.
The dissonance is a great recipe for introspection, and this one is no exception.
Introspection, although discombobulating, however, offers hope of finding a way to live that could bring the two opposites — the realization of mortality, and what to do with the time I have left — in harmony. Introspection also offers hope for reconciliation between the sense of finiteness that exists within us and the vastness that is out there.
Through introspection there is a hope for inventing a personal algebra that sums the totality of our days, and engagements within them, into something that is non-zero. Introspection, perhaps, will be the antidote for the dissonance within. It is a path for personal salvation.
These moments of introspection start to happen more frequently as we get older and have a clearer vision that life is not forever that it once seemed to be. Our end is no longer a distant object shimmering in the fog anymore. Our failing eyes make us visit the optometrist often, but they give us no trouble seeing the distant shimmer of our mortality. In that, our vision keeps getting better.
One outcome I could seek through introspection is to find a framework for living that will make me feel at peace with the knowledge that this body is just a form that I have taken in the present. The things that make it existed before and will exist afterwards. A framework that gives me the wherewithal to close my eyes and feel the continuum of space and time. A framework that brings occasional moments of transcendental experience, the experience of being connected with everything else.
My dreams from introspection for now, however, are more modest — finding a framework for living.
For now, I just seek a framework of living through one day. A framework that will make me look forward to getting up in the morning, and at the end of the day when turning off the lights, brushing teeth, and curling under the softness of freshly washed cotton sheets, allow myself that it was a day well spent. It was a day I will not mind living tomorrow.
Finding that framework is a modest goal of the current introspective journey.
Days add up into a week, a month, a year, and to the rest of the lifetime. If I can figure out the recipe for a day well lived, near the end when the candle of our life is near its last flicker, I can perhaps say it was a life well lived.
Of course, finding that framework is not easy. It could be particularly difficult at some turns in life, e.g. at the start of retirement when for the first time in our life, we really have to shape a new identity with our own hands. Retirement could be a perfect storm — a loss of identity, nothing in hand, no anchors, and on top of that, an awareness of mortality.
Along the way I also need to remind myself to keep things simple. Keep eyes on the goal I am seeking and not get lost in mazes within a mazes that introspection and philosophy could be.
At the end of the road, there is an algebra that sums the day to a positive number. The task is to figure that algebra out.
Ciao.
Summary:
1. Feeling the expansiveness of space and time also brings the feeling how fleeting our existence in this universe is.
2. A retaliation of our mortality, and not being at ease with it, creates a dissonance within. It is the beginning of existential crises and a journey into introspection.
3. Introspection offers the hope of bringing the sense of our own finiteness and the vastness of the universe into a harmony.
4. One outcome of introspection is to find a framework for living that would allow us to be at peace with our sense of mortality. And also, at the end of the journey will allow us to reflect back and say that it was a life well lived.
Related:
Self-Introspection
A fulfilling life and finding another god in retirement
