Is there more to life than this? #1

by Phil Ossefie (with contributions from Pierce Ng and Todd Ler)

TLDR: Not really, it’s just 10 things.

Intro

No one asks this question when life is good or busy. It’s specially reserved for when we’re spiraling, usually a midlife crisis, existential crisis, or some level of depression, basically whenever it feels like something important is missing. So this is an attempt at an actual answer for everything there is to life.

Get a Life

If you’ve ever had the pleasure of receiving this advice but not the follow up details, here’s a fairly good example from Reddit of what having a life looks like:

“I play a hardcore sport with a team M-F mornings, I have a part time job, and I’m studying for an extremely difficult exam to advance my career. I have a couple of close friends that I see a few times a month. I’m a musician that plays every weekend for 1k people.”

Obviously this is one of billions of lives, but even across so many different individuals going through our own specific experiences, there are shared aspects that apply to us all:

From the example, we can see why OP has a life:

She engages in almost all aspects of living, and is fulfilled in many ways. All this from barely a paragraph of what her actual experience may be. It could be far more enriching, and of course include hardship.

But isn’t there more?

No doubt, life is complicated and some of us may think that sorting all of it into 10 things is too simple. While everyone is welcome to poke holes in the framework, consider whether doing that serves us.

While belief systems must account for nuance and complexity to accurately represent truth, it’s generally easier to begin understanding all information from as far away as possible, to see as much of the whole picture as we can.

It forces us to distill big things down to its very essence, especially something as big as human life.

As far as we can tell, the essence of human life is to feel purpose and fulfillment.

There is more, for sure.

It just may not be about infinite expansion outward as opposed to infinitesimally inward. Not breadth, but depth. Maybe the universe and life is fractal like that.

Perhaps everything we already know fits within these 10 categories, or at least thinking this way may serve us more in seeking truth, and therefore living it in practice, than looking for exceptions that exist outside.

3.5 Sources

Now that we’ve stepped back to see as much of it as we can, we can now go a little closer and start to see some details. Before coming across The 10, it made sense to me that all purpose and fulfillment could stem from little as 3.5 sources. In order of popularity:

1 – Might (leverage) i.e. wealth, power—money, authority, status, fame
2 – Relationships
3 – Health
3.5 – Soul i.e. human spirit—expression, creativity, spirituality

All are fairly self-explanatory except for Soul. Whether or not it “technically” exists to anyone, it has a specific type of effect on us. The existence of Soul in a human being affects us in certain ways.

This includes the urge to pay attention to things that no one told us to care about, and do something that isn’t motivated by a sense of duty or even rationality. In these moments, we probably feel at least the slightest passion, something beyond the usual neutral. Whether it’s our hobbies, interests, peeves or dislikes, it’s how we express ourselves.

If anyone still isn’t sure what this Soul effect is, what do you not have to care about but do anyway? What are you into? What do you enjoy about life that doesn’t feel like a chore or duty? What do you not need to do but do anyway because you want to?

For any of us who can’t answer these, it might be that our soul needs nourishment. But don’t sweat it anyway, it’s only worth half compared to the rest because I assume that many people in the modern world don’t consider this stuff as important, broadly because “we can’t eat faith, fun or love, they’re not going to keep us alive.”

After that, we dive a little deeper, to inspect the details more closely. This brings us to:

The 10

Since the 3.5 Sources may leave a bit too much room for interpretation and may not be informative enough to many, The 10 present a clearer view of life’s overarching patterns. By breaking life down more specifically into 10 components, we have a sharper awareness of it.

They can be interpreted however we need: 10 aspects of life to develop, 10 ways to grow, 10 principles of living fully, 10 pillars of a holistic life. So, The 10 for short.

The thing is, I didn’t come up with The 10 myself (learnt it from a course called Lovebrain), but notice how it can seamlessly fall under the umbrella categories of the 3.5 Sources, even in the same order of popularity.

Basically, if strangers from all over the world who have never interacted before can arrive at similar conclusions about life, maybe these conclusions are worth looking into.

I. Career

… is action, pure doing. Most of us throw at least half of our waking hours for more than half our of our lives at it. If “what we do defines us” is true, then career is often a big determinant of our identities. Our job descriptions become self-descriptions, even if we hate our job.

It’s generally the biggest way regular people bring value to society, transactionally. Advancing in Career is self-actualization,

“Is this the best I can do?”

It’s about proving to ourselves how far we can go, not primarily a selfless endeavour.

Regardless, corresponding to the amount we benefit society, we are owed value (often to sustain our ability to continue our value-bringing actions). Society returns this to us in the form of-

II. Money

This is a storage of value for future exchanges. Its only use is to be exchanged for actual value, i.e. experiences we can and can’t touch that improve our odds of survival, boost our motivation to live or both.

It doesn’t technically do anything on its own, since it’s essentially just numbers on pieces of paper, plastic or shown on a screen.

It’s fairly useless on a deserted island or deep in a jungle, maybe even within a monastery. But in modern society, the amount of numbers we are rewarded for our actions determines our value in a very real way.

III. Impact (or Legacy)

… is most heavily tied to Career because it’s the result of our actions. Whereas career is about self-actualization, the focus of Impact is beyond just ourselves. It’s loftier because it concerns our effect on others. Generally, developing one’s career leads to rising wealth and status, which increases the ability to make bigger and longer lasting changes to more people.

Of course it’s possible to create a legacy without Money and authority. Activists, charities and underdogs

e.g. Ghandi, who had high “status” to supporters of the cause he championed)

can fight for and contribute to causes that sometimes successfully overturn existing structural powers, which succeed hopefully because it’s good for humanity in general.

But on a less grandiose and revolutionary scale, we could pursue-

IV. Romantic Relationship(s)

This is most often about propagating our genes on to the next generation. Bringing our descendants into existence would definitely have a small Impact on the area and would alter what could be of the future. They would be undeniable proof, the lasting difference, that we leave on the world. In doing so, we create a-

V. Family

Who we’re born to is pure luck and completely out of our control. We couldn’t choose who we were raised by or the circumstances we were raised in, and we can’t choose who we’ll raise or their reactions and response to our actions.

Family is theoretically the most physically codependent unit in society.

Even if there are stark characteristic incompatibilities between members, sharing physical resources (housing, money, food) with each other is what makes a family. A problem for one member becomes all “our problems”. If this doesn’t seem applicable, it could possibly be a bit dysfunctional.

Of course there is “the family we choose,” a.k.a.-

VI. Friends (or Network)

This is the result of our free will and convenience. Disclaimer, most friends aren’t really “the family we choose” because normally, friends share attention, emotions and other such non-physical resources. We don’t have to put our physical resources where our mouths are.

Only the few that pool physical resources together, putting more of themselves at stake in the relationship, can really call their friends “family”. Especially if these friends share more physical resources among each other than their actual family.

VII. Physical Health

… is often sacrificed or neglected in the pursuit of Money or Career, regardless whether we’re poor or ambitious. Making time for health can be difficult and disruptive to solving bigger problems or seizing more important opportunities in our lives.

It makes sense to treat being healthy as maintenance work at least, aiming to do the bare minimum to keep our bodies running smoothly.

But some see fitness as an end in and of itself, striving to maximise it the same way others aim to maximise Money and Career to achieve the same goal of living well.

VIII. Mental Health

… is probably even more overlooked than Physical Health because the results of nourished and cultivated Mental Health are even less observable. Most people equate it to happiness which isn’t wrong, but also isn’t complete.

It should include simply feeling neutral despite the world constantly changing around us—being secure, content, resilient, stable, at ease and so on.

To improve Mental Health, we usually try to address external circumstances first, being more empathetic, employing a soft touch, less harsh ways of doing things. All that is great and should continue, but the greatest improvements are probably the ones we summon from within ourselves. This is highly dependent on the openness of our perception, which is often correlated to-

IX. Spirituality

… is belief specifically in unverifiable things. Caring about this belief has to be strong enough to direct the way we would otherwise think and behave.

That’s the very real effect it should have on us, even if we can’t prove that what we believe in is real. We can’t really be considered spiritual if believing or not made no difference to us, we just don’t care about it enough.

Conversely, there’s taking it too seriously. This is somewhat ironic because our openness to believe and accept something we can’t prove has now made us close-minded to other things that could be far more real. Sometimes that defeats the goal of the belief in the first place.

X. Fun

… is often the most frivolous way to live. Its purpose is to feel good and to serve no other purpose (paraphrased Johan Huizinga), even if it might have productive side-effects.

We do what we enjoy for its own sake, like rollercoasters and arcades.

It’s the key to not taking life too seriously and probably staying sane. If we have too little fun, i.e. no interests or hobbies outside our duties (work, family), people will question whether we’re human anymore.

Too much fun (with zero productive effects) makes us a burden. Despite low odds of success, the dream is always to turn fun into something “useful,” to make it our Career and/or Legacy. Fun turns productive by adding economic and cultural value to society. The activity may become less enjoyable, but will likely still be more fun than doing something we had no interest in in the first place.

Re-organizing aspects of life

Like we said earlier, it’s a matter of how far and deep we want to keep investigating. The truth is already there, it’s just a matter of how nuanced. If it serves us to get more and more granular, go for it. But us? We’re good here.

Whether it’s specific or a broad category of knowledge, actions or beliefs, viewing it through this framework contextualizes it’s relevance to our lives. Some examples:

If a category like “morality” (e.g. respect and kindness) is important to us, then where do we apply it in our life?

• It could be in our Career, to our clients, superiors and subordinates
• To our Romantic Relationship and Friends
• It can be about adhering to some form of Spirituality

What about politics?

• It often isn’t our Career for most of us normal people
• It could be how we view our Impact on society through what we vote for and protest against

What about environmentalism?

• Maybe it’s our contributed Impact on society
• Or our Career and how we earn Money

What about technology?

• For some of us it’s our Career, researching and developing to also Impact the world for the better
• It could also just be a tool that helps us earn Money
• Or a tool that maintains our relationships with Friends, Family, etc.
• Conversely, some of us see it as a Mental Health blackhole
• For others, just something we can play games for Fun on

What about art?

• It’s role in our life can be just a hobby for Fun and to make Friends
• Or it fulfills us as a Career even if we don’t make enough Money from it
• Of course it could be our Impact on culture or provoking feeling in as much of humanity as possible

What about chores?

• It’s probably to maintain Physical Health
• Maybe even Impact, it’s our service to Family
• Or we see it negatively as taking time away from working on our Career or making Money

The 10 don’t change, we change how we see our actions and beliefs, our experiences, to fit the framework. We can see how our life is balanced (or not) across these 10 facets. Chances are if it’s imbalanced, that’s probably why we’re spiraling.

All this said, if there’s something that truly can’t fit into any category, no matter how we try to spin or stretch it, we’d be interested to hear what a new category could be too!

What we get out of life

There are 10 things we could be getting out of life. At any given moment, our will to live is shaped by at least one of these. With the simplicity of this framework, perhaps it’d be easier to acknowledge and be grateful for what we already have, and more targeted in addressing specific areas of discontentment. There doesn’t have to be more to life than this.

— continued in Then how should we be living? #2 —

Live well,
Phil