Amen to that! Great post!

But then one has to ask oneself--what is living life to the fullest?

Is it satisfying tradition and ritual?

Is it satisfying desires?

Is it fulfilling our innermost desires, passions, and emotions and those things we have wished to do all our lives?

Or is it the pursuit of truth. ego-transcendance. compassion. morality. wisdom .

The first is the fanatic, the second is the idiot, the third is the fool, and the fourth is the madman (i.e. the Bullsh*t artist as mel brooks would have it). As for me, I choose the madman.

I saw on an email recently that had a sinature on it and it seems appropriate to this thread. No offense intended here.

life is meant to be lived to it's fullest
taking care of ones body shouldn't be the ultimate goal
In the end we should be sliding in on our sides
with a beer on one hand and a cigar in the other
while screaming "Yeeaaa what a ride that was!!"




Rob "Stinger" Lordier
Creator of the original Privateer FAQ
4+ years here and still lovin' every minute!
Favorite saying - Life is a journey, not a destination

Bro, you remind me of a very close friend who went out with that spirit. His last year was fighting cancer, many operations, couldn't eat solid food, chemo, radiation, the whole works. As a fellow member of AA, he had the cigar, but the glass was filled with ginger ale. No matter how sick he got, and all the pain he was in, he never let himself or any of us who were close to him get down about it. I drove him to meetings until he was too sick for that, then we would bring meetings to his apartment. Amazing spirituality and joy from those meetings. They affirmed that life is a precious daily gift, and Mark, who was dying a slow painful death, was the one saying "oh what a ride I've had". He died in Feb 1998, he was 34 years old. He was sitting in his favorite rocking chair with his family and simply passed on.

I've know many who've committed suicide. Most recently one of my closest friends last April. He was one of my ushers at my wedding, and my younger daughter's Godfather. He was too damn stubborn to let anyone know he was hurting inside, and they found him hanging in the shower in a hotel room. Unfortunately, most of the people I've known who aren't with us anymore went in a similar fashion.

So, back on the original post, yes, life is a daily blessing and can be taken so damn fast.

And Wilde: My answer to that is "did you do all you could to help your fellow men and women in your lifetime?" To me, that brings peace of mind, which is contentedness and happiness.

Edited by - Boscoe on 1/3/2005 4:07:44 AM

But help fellow men and women with what? Help them...out of poverty? Out of drunkeness and debauchery? The first is compassion, the second morality.

Plunge into the Totality of the Real --Plotinus. He means to search actively in life for true meaning, morality, compassion and above all--the Numinous. the ultimate reality. He called it the One, the Buddhists call it Sunyata, the Hindus call it Brahman, C.G. Jung called it the Self--

what all these point to is an ultimate knowledge of what it means to be yourself, to be human, and through that knowledge form a bond with ultimate reality and truth. It means to have transcended the ego and found your self, and through that touch upon the Numinous. Wisdom in its purest form, in other words.

Stating the obvious somewhat.

___Corsair~MMIV
Reasons I'm better than you: #78468- I have squiggly lines in my name.

Some people get so wrapped up in materialism that they don't enjoy life. Until I know what I'm supposed to do in life, I'm going to make fun of it and keep reminding people of how short life is. As I told my friend Meryl after encouraging her to eat a slice of pizza she thought was unhealthy with the words "Life's short": "Now it's a little shorter, have fun"

Wilde, you're going to sprain your frontal lobes if you're not careful!
The simpler, the better. Most times it's simply being there for a friend or loved one when they need someone to talk to, or cry to, or share a joy. When one complicates it more than that, the meaning gets lost. I've learned this from my children. They remain by far my best teachers in the simplicity of joy and peace of mind.

Edited by - Boscoe on 1/3/2005 2:35:07 PM

It's alright, I'm a teenager. I have no frontal lobes

Am I overcomplicating it? Or just seeing what is truly there? OR acting like a madman?

I would use Plato's idea of the Tripartite soul in this case. Humans, he said, have three fundamental aspects of the psyche--bodily desires, passions and emotions, and that part in them that yearns for reason, for wisdom. Not to criticize of course, but why strive only for love and enjoyment? I'd go for transcendance, for philosophy--not in the sense of modern philosophy, which for the most part revolves around cheap meditation and questions such as "Is the table really there???", but rather in the ancient Hellenistic sense of philosophy as a path . A road to wholeness, to completion, to the final transcendance of the ego and path into the Real.

philosophia

________________

signed, the bullsh** artist

First off living life to the fullest can mean alot of things, helping others, having a fun time for your self, and not getting wrapped up in all these addictions like sex, drinking, etc. People don't think that life only happens once, and we should make it the best life we can.

You're overcomplicating it. I'm 44, and in my years I've learned to simplify, simplify, simplify, and peace of mind comes with it. Doesn't mean I don't deal with complicated issues, I do everyday at work, but it does mean that I don't throw Copi's logic at everything or spend hours "trying to figure it out". When the answer comes, I accept it, not analyze it.
Try it, it works. (I did just what you do what I was in college, too many philosophy and logic classes clouded the hell out of my thinking.)

Why not analyze the truth? Merely accepting it...what that does only leads to at the very least being unsure of the truth, and at the most being completely false. What truth is not found by analyzing, by philosophy, by questioning? I'm not overcomplicating it...

not to insult or anything, but Socrates once described himself as "the gnat stinging the lazy horse of Athens into thought." To me simply accepting any proposition as truth, merely enjoying life, and forgetting the questioning of truth and reality is like being that lazy horse, content to wander down the road of life enjoying itself. Bliss, to be sure. Pleasure unimaginable. But the horse does not have joy .

Just a question, have you ever learned propositional calculus (formal logic and derivations)?

________________

signed, the bullsh** artist

True true, go on.

Agreed with Boscoe, at 45, simplification, is primary. Let youth have ther complications, give me Pure and Simple.