Lifestyle Prescription

MEANING AND PURPOSE

Some meaning, some purpose, some life*

* Shades of Winston Churchill's 'Some chicken, some neck.'

We start off with a blank slate. By the time we're old enough to start thinking about meaning and purpose the slate is usually filled to over flowing with all sorts of stuff, mainly written by other people.

The Jesuits said 'Give us the child and at 7 we'll give you back the adult. They're still doing it.

Lenin said something to the same effect; 'Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.' (He also said 'The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.')

Or think of it this way.

You're an iceberg and your subconscious mind is the 90% that's under the water. Right at the bottom of it is your true essence, the real you, but it's been so overlaid by the habits, attitudes, values and beliefs of other people that you don't have a clue what that essence really is.

And some of the things down there are hooks, anchors and balls and chains that are holding you back from living the life you'd like to live. In fact you don't even know what the life you'd like to live looks like because you're living out other people's lives.

You're 40 and you don't even know what you'd like to do when you grow up! You're not aware of your intelligence or personality strengths and weaknesses. You don't have a career, all you've got is bloody job which you just fell into and drifted with the tide. You're like a yacht without a rudder, at the mercy of the wind. You're a ship that never came in, because you never sent it out.

It's the reason you're tired and deflated.

You get headaches from bashing your head against brick walls.

Here's a copy of the Meaning and Purpose statement I sent off to Donald Ardell early in 2006. It took me a dozen or so years of pottering around with it to get it into the form that I was happy to let Ardell have a look at it.

I don't know whether it will make much sense to you, and you might find parts of it weird, crazy or even mildly offensive, but, on the other hand it might inspire and motivate you to sit down for a few minutes, hours, days, weeks, months or years to scratch out a meaning and purpose statement of your own.

When you've done that report back.

John Miller

SOME MEANING, SOME PURPOSE, SOME LIFE

I was born with the potential to live the life I'd like to live.

My life is empty and meaningless, until I give it meaning and purpose. It doesn't matter much what the meaning and purpose is, as long as I think it is meaningful and purposeful. I can choose what I believe.

I can pretty much choose what I want to do.

It is a big ask expecting to gain meaning and purpose for my own life by having someone do something to me. Sooner or later I have to do something for myself; that involves thinking, introspection, meditation, reflection contemplation, reading, conversation, time, effort and money. It was Descartes who said, 'I think, therefore I am'. I agree with that. But 'I do therefore I am' as well.

My search for M&P transcends acceptance of the myths, superstitions, dogmas, creeds, ideologies, attitudes, values, beliefs, habits, characteristics, likes and dislikes ... of others.

I am responsible for my own thoughts, feelings, choices and actions - and my past, present and future life circumstances.

As an adult, I'm responsible for the effects on myself of the indoctrination I received as child and which I continue to receive from the hegemony of my culture, from the mass media, from my family, peers, colleagues. Getting out of the box, being the real me and getting to the essence of who I am is the great challenge of my life. (You get more satisfaction out of opening your own box than opening Pandora's)

The life I lead, the perceptions I have and the reality I experience are unique and peculiar to myself.

What other people think of me is not my business. I don't need either their approval or disapproval. I'm my own person. I'll say and do what I like without having to worry what other people think. I accept the consequences.

My life presents me with decisions, choices and challenges I am free to accept or reject to be:

• powerful or weak

• courageous or vapid

• happy or sad

• wise or stupid

• awake or asleep

• optimistic or pessimistic

• knowledgeable or ignorant

• focused or deviating

• active or passive

• willing to move out or draw back

• ready serve or be served

• building walls or bridges

• opening doors or closing them

• participating or spectating

• bludging off society or contributing to it

• sitting on my arse or galvanizing myself into

action

• thankful or not.

Life has its contradictions. Life is difficult and easy, happy and sad, rich and poor.

This is my life. It is not a dress rehearsal for the next one.

Throughout my life I will be plagued by doubts centered on thoughts about the life I've led, the life I could have led, the life I'm leading now and the life I'll be living in the future.

My quest for a life of meaning and purpose requires me to engage in constant crap detection - taking a good hard look at myself and what's going on around me.

I will never give up the quest to live the life I want to lead until I’m in the box.

The things that stop me from doing what I want to do and being what I want to be are

• lazines

• ignorance

• stupidity

• attachment to a fixed way of being.

My life takes on greater meaning and purpose and I receive great joy when I assist others to live the lives they'd like to live.

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