The good life

Most living beings live their lives purely instinctively. But humans have evolved to do more... perhaps we use pure instinct only twice in our lives — upon being born, when the first instinctive act is to breathe and the second to latch on to the mother’s breasts for food. As time passes a human depends lesser upon instincts and starts acting based on learnings.

Until about 10,000 years ago learning how to hunt or gather food was enough and children used to become self-dependent by the age of 13 to 14 years. As humans collectively learned more things, so grew the need for new humans (children) to learn about all the things available to be known. At different times in human history, knowledge of different things was believed to lead to the ‘good life’ and systematic teaching methods and institutions of learning arose to teach these things.

Like all materials, human minds too have variety and just as each material cannot be used for everything, each human mind is not suitable for every kind of learning. Some minds are musically oriented while others are good at predicting the trajectory of projectiles. But achieving that which is considered the good life by the majority, increasingly children are oriented to run in rat-races. This results in successes and failures due to innate abilities and competition for limited resources. Successes makes one feel elated and happy and failures make one dejected, unhappy and hurt.

Successes and failures are outcomes caused by many causes and conditions beyond the act of the person who feels like the subject of the success or failure. Consider the following example: in the movie Terminator-2, Arnold Schwarzenegger played the role of the Terminator T-1000 and Robert Hammond Patrick Jr. played the role of Terminator Model 101. Although Terminator Model 101 had to fight T-1000, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Robert Hammond Patrick Jr. would be foolish to be happy or sad about the outcome of their fight! Life is like that: there is a difference between oneself and the role they are playing. If one learns to assign all successes and failures to the role, he/she remains unperturbed by events.

I have come to believe that this is crux of good life: there are actions but no successes and no failures. I act to the best of my ability but the outcome is others’ responsibility. I enjoy all my acts without any desire for their results; once the act is over I move on. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Robert Hammond Patrick Jr. took turns beating up each other but who ultimately prevailed was decided by the playwright and how it happened was decided by the director ; neither Arnold Schwarzenegger and Robert Hammond Patrick Jr. had any powers to change it.

I have learnt that the good life is in the experiences rather than outcomes.