Are you lost in life?
(portuguese only)
Are you lost in your life? Yvonne Bezerra de Mello recorded a live, not about finding a meaning in your life, but about the multiple ways of seeking meaning in life. In the beginning she explains that having a mission in life severely limits life itself, because life cannot be limited to just one talent or one objective. No, life has no fixed path and has multiple facets and a person has multiple talents. The book that she bases her discussion on is “Man’s search for meaning”, by Viktor Frankl. She highlights a phrase from the book that tells that there is one thing that can never be taken from a person, no matter if the conditions are the worst possible, which is the freedom to choose your own path in life.
“I think, therefore I am”. I tried to change it to “I feel, therefore I am alive”, but soon I’ve noticed that plants don’t have feelings. It didn’t quite work. “I age, therefore I live”. Good concept, except that the Sun ages and isn’t a living being.
If I think on films and news report in general, to have a goal or mission in life is often associated with grandiosity. I think that reporters ask about people’s mission or goal in life because they seek some golden answer. Some ultimate purpose. As if people’s life was about climbing the Mount Everest. I don’t know the origin of the phrase “Nature does not make leaps”, but let’s apply it to life. Life happens in steps. The steps may be larger or smaller, but life doesn’t always happen in leaps. What I have in mind are stories about survivors of wars, terrible accidents, recovery of depression and athletes in general. Life is always a daily practice and instead of focusing on the end result, the end, one should focus on the process.
I think that people often worry too much with the far away and the big, forgetting what is right in front of them, in their hands, by their side. To breath, to walk, to eat. If I remember it right, it was a professor of climatology at college who said that people often forget about breathing properly and by breathing properly one can solve many problems in life. To eat properly and to sleep well are fundamental. The volleyball coach Bernardinho cites the book “Make your bed”, by William McRaven. The book’s title says it all. In Yvonne’s live she discusses that the meaning of life, in her point of view, has to be associated with sharing and collectivity. If we relate her view with Neil Armstrong’s famous quote “This is one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”. Humanity is a sum of many small steps. I’ve learned with exact sciences that complex problems are better tackled when you break them down into smaller and more simpler problems.
I think that if a person lost in life seeks some advice from me, I’d say something along the lines of “Look at your feet and your hands. What do you feel and think? Where are you standing at and what is it that you catch with your hands? Where you don’t stand on and what is it that you leave?”. I think that people forget about themselves, where they are and what they are doing.
Images made with ChatGPT about this theme:
