“The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.”
— Alan Watts
Well, folks, I had a birthday this week. I turned 46. I swear I was just 25 a few years ago. What happened?
I guess I’m at that strange age where, to some, I’m an old bastard. And to others, I’m still a young’n. Regardless, I woke up remembering the words of Dr. Seuss: "How did it get so late so soon?"
Anyway, what’s pretty cool is that I share the same birthday as the great Buddhist philosopher and speaker Alan Watts. He was born on Jan 6, 1915—exactly 65 years apart from my birth.
What I’ve taken from his teachings over the years is simply this: life isn’t some grand problem to be fixed. It’s an experience to be LIVED. That’s his main message throughout all his lectures and writings.
Existence, my friends, is a cosmic game and we’re here to play. There’s no final goal to achieve. No distant glory. Just now. This moment. And we must be fully engaged with whatever we’re doing.
Be creative. Shun trends and fads. Live naturally, without excessive self-focus or rigid plans.
“This is the real secret of life—to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.”
—Alan Watts
What comes with age, at least for me, is the realization that chasing the idea of everlasting security in an ever-changing world is a losing game. It’s the root of much of our suffering. True peace comes from accepting impermanence and immersing oneself in the eternal now.
The ego, which is essential for development in the first half of life, becomes less prominent as we age. And this summons us to shift our focus inward and engage with the world on a deeper level. As Carl Jung acknowledged, “midlife is the time to let go of an overdominant ego and to contemplate the deeper significance of human existence.”
Greeting the morning sun or sitting by a waterfall on a fall afternoon becomes more significant than climbing the corporate ladder or stacking bills in your bank account.
We’re here, as Watts reminds us, to “become more intensely aware of the living vibrations of the real world.” And most importantly, to try to retain a little of that childlike curiosity as we ride life to our final breath.
These are all simple ideas, but they are quite difficult to live by--especially in this feverish age of the modern world, where status, riches, and materialism are the dominant values, and the future is idolized at the cost of the present.
Before I end with some of my favorite nuggets of wisdom from Watts, I just wanted to thank you all for subscribing, reading, and sharing what I post here on Substack. It’s the readers of this page who make me want to work harder in providing value through the medium of the written word.
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Now, I’d like to end with a few profound passages from Alan Watts I’ve collected over the years. I hope you enjoy it. And cheers to the New Year! I have some amazing poetic content on the horizon.
“People sometimes fail to live because they are always preparing to live.”
“Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun.”
“There is simply no problem in life; it is absolutely purposeless play; it doesn't have to continue; there is no reason whatever to explain it, for explanations are just another form of complexity, a new manifestation of life on top of life, gestures gesturing.”
“We seldom realize, for example that our most private thoughts and emotions are not actually our own. For we think in terms of languages and images which we did not invent, but which were given to us by our society.”
“We suffer from the delusion that the entire universe is held in order by the categories of human thought, fearing that if we do not hold to them with the utmost tenacity, everything will vanish into chaos.”
“To ‘know’ reality you cannot stand outside it and define it; you must enter into it, be it, and feel it.”
“The timid mind shuts this window with a bang, and is silent and thoughtless about what it does not know in order to chatter the more about what it thinks it knows.”
“For unless one is able to live fully in the present, the future is a hoax. There is no point whatever in making plans for a future which you will never be able to enjoy. When your plans mature, you will still be living for some other future beyond. You will never, never be able to sit back with full contentment and say, “Now, I’ve arrived!” Your entire education has deprived you of this capacity because it was preparing you for the future, instead of showing you how to be alive now.”
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