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Nirvana



I can no more cease to write than you can stop breathing. It is my salvation. Writing is my path to Nirvana, where suffering has been extinguished, and complete peace is realized, if you believe that sort of thing. I'm not sure that I do, but it's a nice sentiment.

For me, since I must work at doing something that fails to excite me in any meaningful way, I must search for my own meaning. Writing is the vehicle I use now. It used to be that my path lay with studying martial arts, but life changes, the body wearies.

I suspect many of us, no, most of us, are in the same boat. We are trying to manage our lives the best we can while searching for Nirvana, our own private paradise, or however we might  describe it. Viktor Frankl wrote Man's Search for Meaning. He posits that our meaning is what we choose it to be and that meaning may change day to day. He said, "“Those who have a 'why' to live, can bear with almost any 'how'.”

Following your passion is essential to your well-being once the staples of life, food, shelter, security, have been realized. For those in more dire circumstance, it is worth noting that Viktor Frankl was a Holocaust survivor, yet he wrote: Trotzdem Ja Zum Leben Sagen: Ein Psychologe Erlebt das Konzentrationslager ("Saying Yes to Life in Spite of Everything: A Psychologist Experiences the Concentration Camp"). This is known in English as Man's Search for Meaning.

 The caveat "primum non nocere," or in English, "first do no harm," is of course important to keep in mind. We are not talking of passion for things harmful. Your passion, your raison d' etre, might be music, or literature, or art. Creating something, anything, can be most fulfilling.

Whatever your path to your own personal Nirvana, however you choose to think of what that might be, is your very own and it should be cherished. Enjoy every minute of what you do with no mind to the outcome. You might not yet be in Nirvana but the path you have chosen is yours alone so well done you!



Comments

  1. UnknownDecember 5, 2014 at 11:19 AM

    Personal Nirvana has always been somewhat of a fleeting thing for me. Many interests from Theoretical Physics to music everything and anything in between. Mostly fleeting because I lack focus or the knowledge of how to get there and as you may well know, I am my own worst enemy. The other morning I was listening to an interview with the guitarist from "SlipKnot". Whilst not word for word, the general idea was that you should try what your interested in even if you suck at it, because eventually you'll get better and at least you tried.

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownDecember 6, 2014 at 1:21 AM

    Exactly! We regret most not what we did but what we didn't do.

    ReplyDelete

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