Throughout my daily life I’ve observed many people who seem to be wasting their lives; these people seem to live each day being neither happy nor productive. Seeing this, and talking with such people, I’ve become interested in why people behave this way. Why do we waste our lives?
To waste our lives means to cease learning and cease exploring; in this state we deny the joy that exists through these activities and thus the world goes by while we ourselves stagnate. Life becomes monotonous and our youthful thirst for adventure withers. This is how a lot of people live and it’s strange how they accept living such a life. So, I’m interested, why do we accept such a life?
It appears that we prefer comfort to happiness, and there are many factors that make us comfortable. There is the comfort of a partner who secures us against loneliness, who’ll take care of us when we’re ill, and who allows us the public freedom to sit down anywhere we like together without arousing the negative stigmatism that sitting down on our own blights us with.
Associated with having a partner, there is also the comfort of being able to fulfil our sexual demands as and when they arise, a sense of financial security, and the undeniable social aspect – having someone to talk to.
We appear to behave this way in order to secure the ability to satisfy our psychological wants and needs. It is like storing food in our house in order to secure ourselves against the physical imperative of future hunger. Also, there is the comfort created from an occupation, a talent, and a social status; all these imply position, power, and often wealth, but does any of this make us happy?
Comfort doesn’t appear to create happiness, so what is the effect of this comfort?
It seems that the effect of comfort is dullness. Comfort seems to switch the mind off rather than make it come alive; it seems to sap one’s energy rather than acting as an impetus that fuels it, and thus our passion to live each day to the full dissipates. One of the definitions of dullness is ‘Depression’ and this seems a common affliction which can be found in a ‘comfortable’ lifestyle.
It seems that comfort exists as the result of an acknowledgement that one has secured access to the ability to satisfy any bodily demands that are likely to arise in the future, and this causes one to become quite contentedly inactive in the present. It seems that our personal comfort, combined with a certain neglect of others’ suffering in the world, causes us to live lazily and thus waste our lives.
It seems that we only ever ‘wake up’ from this slumber when we are confronted with a crisis, and only act to ease the suffering of others when a charity shows us images that bring about a realisation of the consequences of our own neglect, but those emotions are quickly dissipated through the giving of a meagre amount of money.
Comfort comes from certainty. When one is certain that they have food, hunger is no longer such an issue and one is comfortable in that regard; when one is certain they have a partner, sex is no longer such an issue and one is comfortable in that regard, and so on. Certainty can only come from repetition, which means creating a life for yourself where you know roughly what is going to happen the next day, and the day after that, and so on.
Repetition implies monotony, and, as such, a comfortable life is a monotonous life of certainty.
One of the determinant factors of a freshness and fullness in life comes from one’s willingness to leave the comfort of certainty and step into an attitude where one lives never quite knowing what the next day will bring.
This decision is not something to be taken lightly, or acted upon impulsively without logic, for example, thinking you can just go off anywhere without any money. If you try that, the insecurity of your circumstances will show you the error of your ways. Saying that, it is also unintelligent to live a comfortable life, perhaps not in a financial regard, but undoubtedly in a psychologically regard – people working 9-5 every day of their lives are not happy people. As someone once said, ‘Don’t live the same day for 50 years and call that a life’.
So, how do we waste our lives?
Essentially, it seems that wasting our lives means a state of living in which we become largely inactive in ourselves. This fundamentally expresses itself as a life in which we watch what others are creating rather than being creative ourselves.
Comfort quells creativity.
We become passive observers of other people’s lives rather than having a passion to act in life ourselves. This is undoubtedly related to the colossal interest people appear to have in other people’s lives. Seeing the indolent attitude that comfort arouses, we have to seriously question in ourselves whether comfort itself is a psychological narcotic.
As willing passive observers of other people’s lives, we live life as members of an audience. Why?
One fundamental reason for this is to avoid hurt. Not merely the physical hurts, but the psychological hurts that one accumulates which generally are a lot more destructive, affecting how we relate to ourselves and others.
The avoidance of this psychological aspect of hurt superficially expresses itself as a fear of judgement – a fear of what other people say. The fear of judgement appears to be a common cause which suppresses our desire to become a centre of activity ourselves and so we become content to let others have the spotlight. But why do we fear this?
Violence is one factor.
Unfortunately, the violence of people is a phenomenon that can be observed daily and takes many different forms. There’s the violence of physical harm or the mere threat of it, the violence expressed through another’s words, or through a casual gesture. This takes place everywhere – in the office, on the streets, in the home, not to mention the atrocities taking place between different countries. This violence occurs for many reasons, and humans seem to have an immense capacity to convince themselves of the necessity for behaving violently.
The essence of the fear which prevents people from being themselves, being original and being creative is the threat of violence from others, the fear of others expressing negative opinions which create psychological hurt. This causes individuals to suppress their natural desires and urges and instead imitate and conform to the rest of society, thus becoming less socially visible, since conformity and imitation is a way to hide yourself socially.
Not feeling good enough is another factor that prevents our creativity flowering. We have a fear of not being good enough. We observe people daily who possess incredible talents and this brings about a sense of inadequacy in relation to our own abilities.
We see others gaining social acceptance by means of their talents and, through comparing our abilities to theirs, we generate a belief that because we perceive our own talents to be inferior to theirs, we will not be accepted socially. We shy away, seeking solace in the shadows, away from the gaze of others.
We appear to believe that we must be talented to a high degree in order to be accepted socially and for some of us that means that it’s only when we consider ourselves to be the best at something that we gain enough confidence to step out publicly. I once heard this phenomenon expressed through a quote which read ‘don’t compare your beginning to another person’s middle’. Everyone has to start somewhere.
You are your own worst critic. Your fear of the public is a reflection of yourself, not the public.
Some accept these varying forms of fear and thus live as passive observers of life. A life led in the confinement of fear.
When, through fear, you deny your own creative capacity, you lose an intrinsic sense of beauty which exists through that act of creation itself. Thus, life for such a person loses an integral sense of beauty that can be gained through adventure and exploration, and an important meaning in life fades.
As fear robs you of that creative beauty, so too are we robbed of the joy that exists through observing that beauty unfold – you lose out, we lose out, it is a total loss.
Furthermore, the loss is much greater than merely the skill and product of a cultivated talent because that loss of beauty affects your conduct, behaviour, and your attitude in, and relationship with, life. Those who are stagnated by their own fear are violent as a result of resenting their own confinement, whereas for those who are freely creative, violence is viewed simply as a brush they do not desire to paint with.
Living in the confinement of fear, we exist watching the beauty of the world unfold, which is of course a beautiful view, but we cannot deny that through living such a life we’ve robbed ourselves of perhaps the greatest gift in life, the ability to create and act ourselves.
What does living within the confines of fear entail?
As we said, living within the confines of fear entails comfort. One seeks to acquire comfort in being a passive observer. One acquires a house, a car, a partner, a pet, a television, and so on.
The indolent attitude brought about through the sensation of comfort dissipates one’s thirst for exploration and instead one’s ‘feathered nest’ becomes incredibly important. Here, all these small possessions become big parts of one’s life – just think how much time one person spends with their partner, watching television, or doing both at the same time.
These small things, existing as big factors of one’s comfort, become depended upon enormously and gain a disproportionate amount of importance in life. And society moulds around that dependence too – television adverts are a big business, the televised news has a huge impact on society’s thinking, and so on.
Dependence is an integral quality in the sustaining of comfort. Dependence means – to rely, especially for support or maintenance; to place trust.
Dependence implies attachment – I depend upon a person that I am attached to, I depend upon a car that I am attached to, and so on.
Attachment means – to fasten, secure, join.
Through attaching myself to something, that ‘something’ then often becomes referred to as ‘mine’ – I attach myself to a group and then refer to it as ’my group’; I attach myself to another person and then refer to them as ‘my partner’, and the same is true for ‘my country’, ‘my family’, and a whole host of other instances.
Of course, through attachment, there is no actual physical thing that is being attached, that attachment is instead actually sourced through the thought of association – the thought that I am associated to another person or object. Through this psychological act of association, I secure myself against a great range of possible psychological disturbances and from this state I derive a sense of comfort. So, what is the problem with comfort?
While comfort makes one feel somewhat content, it is a double-edged sword, because where there is comfort there must be fear. Why?
Comfort has its source in attachment.
Through that attachment I feel comfortable because I have knowledge about that possession and feel certain about its future, but in this there always exists the possibility of detachment – for example, I may lose my partner, my car may get stolen, my house may burn down, my business may go bankrupt, and so on.
The acknowledgement of the possibility of detachment develops fear – a fear of the detachment taking place. Thus, where there is attachment which creates a sense of security and comfort, fear is simultaneously established. Attachment is the essence of a psychological activity that creates the capacity to feel secure and comfortable, but also afraid.
An action which creates a sense of security and simultaneously fear, is not a securing action at all; in this case both the sense of security and fear are derived from the same source.
One’s sense of dependence upon this attachment (i.e., the extent to which one feels one needs that attachment, such as the extent to which one feels one needs one’s partner) is made up of two factors: 1. the security that attachment gives, and 2. the fear of losing the security which is derived through that attachment. An increase in one’s level of dependence is observed to be taking place when one sees, in oneself, the escalation of either the sense of security and comfort, or fear.
Dependence thus becomes a very important question, because the existence of dependence can really mess you up. Your allegiance to that which you depend upon can distort your thinking in that direction and bring about a behaviour which is not holistically fair – logic becomes impaired.
A clear, simple, sequential, precise, and honest act of logic is the only logic; if it’s not that, logic loses all its meaning in life.
We see this distortion in relation to family disputes, political discussions, and religious meetings – in this we observe the inability of people to share information and collaborate. It is illogical, and that isn’t meant with any sense of being offensive, it is an accurate term to describe such an act. As long as one finds security through attachment, fear will always exist and the distortion of logical thinking for the purpose of maintaining that security will be perpetuated. Here, universal truth has been superseded in importance by personal security.
So, what to do with dependence?
Some suggest to finish with dependence entirely. But, to shun dependence totally is illogical. Take the example of the supermarket. I depend upon the supermarket for food, and it is illogical and isolationist to consider growing my own food so that I don’t depend upon the supermarket. If that was the pattern then we’d all have to grow our own food. A few moments’ thought will show the impracticality of this when considering the growing population, the amount of space per person, the cost, and how busy people’s lives are (work, family, friends, sufficient sleep, hobbies, leisure, etc.).
But, is depending upon the supermarket really a problem?
You may have concerns with the quality of the food – I’m not talking about that. I’m asking, is the shallow dependence that we have upon the supermarket a problem?
It’s not, because if the supermarket closes, you won’t sit around moping about it for weeks on end, you will respond to that closure intelligently and find a new source of food.
You see this all the time when shops close. But the dependence upon a partner is different. That dependence is not shallow; we depend very deeply here, and we thus have an immense security and fear enveloped in this attachment. So, the question of dependence is not: to depend or not to depend, but is instead a question of what is the right level at which to depend? What level of dependence does not destroy your intelligence, freedom, or your capacity to think logically? What is a level of dependence which will not cause an illogical belief in security and an illogical belief in fear.
What determines the extent of our dependence?
We said earlier that the extent of our dependence is synonymous with the extent to which we feel we need the person or object to which we are attached. The extent of our dependence, this ‘need’, is therefore based in the relationship we have with this object through attachment, and that relationship is made up of:
- What we give to the other (object or person)
- What we delegate to the other (object or person)
- What we receive from the other (object or person)
‘What we give to the other’ refers to, as an example, our time and money – we give to our partner both our time and money.
‘What we receive from the other’ refers to, as an example, perhaps care, sex, or compliments.
And, ‘What we delegate to another’ refers to those things that we feel we are incapable of doing ourselves and therefore delegate them to the other – it may be something as simple as putting up shelves or as deep as having another person think for us because we have such a low opinion of ourselves.
It is the combination of these factors which determine the extent of our dependence and thus the intensity of those sensations of security, comfort, and fear.
Our dependence upon a supermarket is only superficial because we hand over money and receive goods and services that we can get elsewhere.
Our dependence upon a partner for instance, is much greater because we receive, give, and delegate much more. We often delegate so much to a partner that we feel as if we lose ourselves, and we often become so accustomed to receive that we become resentful of the other if they do not give us what we expect.
We also seem to develop a belief that our partner is the only one for us, or the only one that will accept us for who we are. The common thing partners delegate to each other is their problems and this causes a great deal of stress and later becomes a basis for severe resentment.
While we may have referred to the dependence on a partner or supermarket specifically, we are using those as vessels in which to allude to dependence in general. Some depend deeply on a talent, a pleasure, an escape, the image they have of themselves, and so on, but it is basically the same activity.
Essentially, whatever the object you depend upon, you will experience the same – it does not matter if the ‘love’ of your life is Barbara, Mary, or a surfboard, dependence acts the same in each of us. You could write a book about all the different forms of dependence, but it is unnecessary. Once you understand it fundamentally you’ve got the map of the town, it isn’t necessary to walk down all of its streets.
When it comes to the right level at which to depend the concept is very simple:
Depend only very shallowly and retain your independence. Never delegate to another for the purpose of freeing yourself from responsibility, face the challenge yourself and grow. Grow together if you must, but don’t accept any excuse that creates a willingness in you to stop growing.
Someone can tell you this, as I have just done, but it does not have the capacity to transform your psychological structure, the structure conditioned from childhood which willingly attaches and depends – only perception has that capacity.
To observe the operation of your own dependence, comprehending the debilitation of your own physical and psychological independence, the immense lack of responsibility that you feel in life as a result of depending, and all the other jewels which that great educator called dependence has to offer, gives you a natural resilience to depending deeply.
Through perception dependence educates the observer as to the sorrow of its own action.
That understanding frees the mind from the capacity to depend deeply.
The importance of perceiving and understanding dependence and attachment should not be underestimated; it provides great insight into why we lazily waste our lives.
We waste our lives because we are not independent and, thus, fear acting alone.
Laziness is the result of our inability to face challenges ourselves. That inability expresses itself as stress, and laziness is an escape from stress. We waste away our lives because we have not cultured a brain that can face the challenges imposed by it.
You are invited to observe the operation of your own dependence.
Observe what people and objects in your life are responsible for the identity you hold about yourself, and what the consequences of that self-identity are.