Hello friends,
I’m sure you’ve pondered the age-old question “what is the meaning of life?” In all likelihood your views on the answer to this question, or the relevancy of the question itself, have evolved over time. In this week’s discussion we’re going to approach it from a different angle: what would it be like if we got rid of the idea of “a purposeful life” altogether?
For many people, feeling like their life is “worthless” or that they aren’t living up to expectations has a major impact on their mental health. For some, mental illness itself can cause these feelings to occur and persist. It makes good sense then to explore what we even mean by “purpose” when the concept can be so closely tied to our well-being.
We’ll watch a brief video–but really it’s more of an audio recording–of Alan Watts talking about a life without purpose. If this is your first introduction to Alan Watts, you might want to read his Wikipedia entry to learn more about his life and career. In short, he’s a philosopher and writer who studied both Christianity and Asian religious traditions, publishing prolifically in and around the 1960s.
Our warm-up question for this week:
If you had to spend a year either living in solitude with no human contact (including phone/video/texting/etc.), or living in constant presence of others with no real time to yourself, which would you choose and why?
See you soon,
Alex