The Meaning of Life
One day, one of our group member, Yumi, was walking along with her eleven year-old cousin, Cristina, at the park. When her cousin saw the dead bird on the grass, she asked, “Why did the bird die?” Yumi told her, “Well, everything will die someday.” She had another question with wonder face, “If they die someday, why do they have to live?” Why do people have to live if they die someday? What is the meaning of life for people?
People may want to know why they live now. Some people may not find the meaning of life until they die. When we ask people, “What is the meaning of life?” everyone might answer differently. For some people, the meaning inclines toward responsibility of extending a family, transmigration of the soul from a religious belief, scientific thinking, or achievement of self-interest.
After our group researches the sources for this particular subject, we decided to choose the article, “Psychological Health” by Albert Ellis & Windy Dryden from <http://www.Halcyon.com/neiders/conquest/hsp.htm>, updated 2 Nov. 1997. (Portions are adapted from REBT – “Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy,” founded by Albert Ellis in 1955. It stresses the practice of fighting irrational, self-indoctrinated ideas. REBT focuses on how one's thinking and belief systems are the basis of personal problems
1. You should find the Self-Interest.
<Self-Interest> Sensible and emotionally healthy people tend to be primarily interested in themselves and to put their own interests at least a little above the interests of others. They sacrifice themselves to some degree for those for whom they care but not overwhelmingly or completely.
We can be careless about the notion of interest. The self interests are like that happiness, satisfying someone’s desires, getting more money and living longer each in a person’s interests. Some people would call the behavior selfish. But that is different from selfish. For example, suppose that a poor person has 100 dollars. Does he should buy some food for him or spent for more poor people? In that case, he should spend the money for himself. It is not selfish. You should place your own interests first. You keep in mind that your own interests. As well as self-interest, we also possess social interest - the wish to ensure that the social system as a whole survives and develops. How can those two apparently contradictory tendencies are co-exist? The answer is that we help others in order to help ourselves. In other words, our self-interest is enlightened.
2. You should find the social interest.
<Social Interest> Social interest is usually rational and self-helping because most people choose to live and enjoy themselves in a social group or community. If they do not act morally, protect the rights of others, and abet social survival, it is unlikely that they will create the kind of world in which they can live comfortably and happily. You may think that it can be opposed with self-interest, but it is a part of the self interest. For example, some people are including many associations such as community association or an alumni association. Basically, it is showed things that most people want to do for themselves. Otherwise, social interest, also, is for self interest. It appears that like self-interest, social interest is also inherent within human beings. In effect, individual interests are the best served by mutual cooperation. Accordingly, self-interest without social interest is misguided. So is social interest without self-interest. Always putting others first leads to resentment or a martyr attitude.
3. Self-direction is defined as “Healthy people tend to mainly to assume responsibility for their own lives while simultaneously preferring to cooperate with others.” (Albert Ellis & Windy Dryden) Self-direction is different from self-control. It is the ability to plan, guide, and monitor one's own behavior, flexibly and from within to change circumstances. In planning, we think before acting, rather than just responding to a stimulus. We guide our own behavior, using it to carry out our plan. And finally, we monitor our behavior, observing and evaluating ourselves to figure out where we are in respect to our goal. Self-direction is a mental implementation that implies that one must essentially abandon others in order to buy into the goal. For many people with poor self-concept, it is difficult to persevere in goal when they encountering temptation or discouragement. Therefore, some sourcebooks and self-learning programs online suggest these people avoiding meeting temptation. However, it is a very realistic way to deliberate on a possible direction and then firm it up rather than being evasive. It is stated, “To look closely at the issue of resistance, and how might them contribute to better understanding the full potential of self- direction.” (Brocket and Hiemstra, 1991)
4. High frustration tolerance: Rational individuals give both themselves and others the right to be wrong. Even when they intensely dislike their own and others' behavior, they refrain from damning themselves or others, as persons, for unacceptable or obnoxious behavior. People who are not plagued with debilitating emotional distress tend to go along with St. Francis and Reinhold Niebuhr by changing obnoxious conditions they can change, accepting those they cannot, and constantly learning to tell the difference between the two.*[altered from the original]
As an illustration, St. Francis wrote, “Power of the price of love: that can happen only when we give up control, and learn to love reality as it is, people as they are, situations
as they arise, good and bad, useful and useless, the pleasure
and the pain.” Moreover, Reinhold Niebuhr wrote, “The
Serenity Prayer: Living one day at a time, Enjoying one
moment at a time, Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace, Taking, as Jesus did, This sinful world as it is, Not as I would have it, Trusting that You will make all things right, If I surrender to Your will, So that I may be reasonably happy in this life, And supremely happy with You forever in the next.”5. You should think flexibly.
<Flexibility> Healthy and mature individuals tend to be flexible in their thinking, open to change, and unbigoted and pluralistic in their view of other people. They do not make rigid, invariant rules for themselves and others. For example, one person's philosophy after experiencing damage might take the form: "It is unfortunate that this loss has occurred, even though there is no exact reason why it should not have occurred. It is sad but is not awful, and I will try again." Another's might take the form: "This absolutely should not have happened, and it is horrific that it did. These circumstances are now intolerable, and I cannot continue to function." The first person's response is apt to lead to sadness, while the second person may be well on their way to depression.
6. Acceptance of uncertainty: People can be happy by acceptance of uncertainty. According to the portions adapted from REBT as stated by Albert Ellis & Windy Dryden, healthy and happy men and women tend to admit and accept the knowledge that we seem to live in a world of probability and chance where absolute certainties do not and probably never will exist. They realize that it is often fascinating and exciting and definitely not horrible to live in this kind of probabilistic and uncertain world. They enjoy a good degree of order but do not demand to know exactly what the future will bring or what will happen to them. As soon as you accept that you live in the world filled with uncertainty, you can release yourself from the perfection and the stress that may come from fitting into the certain form.
7. Commitment to creative pursuits: Most people tend to be healthier and happier when they are vitally absorbed in something outside themselves and preferably have at least one powerful creative interest, as well as some major human involvement, that they consider so important that they structure a good part of their life around it.
For example, when artist creates a new artwork, from my experience, he/she feels alive from the special reasons. When artist are giving himself/herself up wholly to his/her artwork, he/she can produce the masterpiece. The progresses give the artist natural happiness, and the artist feels instantly “the meaning of life” through the journey.
8. Scientific thinking
9. Self-acceptance
10. Risk-taking: Emotionally healthy people tend to take a pair amount of risk and to try to do what they want to do, even when there is a good chance that they my fail. They tend to be adventurous but not foolhardy.
In this case, we can picture the various athletes who decided their personal achievements for the athletic career. Even though they know that only one person can obtain the champion, they still pursue their goals. When they have their goals as a best player in the world, it motivates them to endeavor every time they practice. It makes them happy while they try their best.
11. Long-rage hedonism: People are categorized as hedonism tend to seek both pleasures of the moments and those of the future and do not often court future pain for present gain in their life. They are hedonistic, that is, happiness- seeking and pain-avoidant. They assume that they will probably live for quite a few years, therefore; they had better think of both today and tomorrow and not be obsessed with immediate gratification. Philosophers commonly distinguish between psychological hedonism and ethical hedonism. Psychological hedonism is the view that humans are psychologically constructed in such a way that we exclusively desire pleasure. Ethical hedonism is the view that our fundamental moral obligation is to maximize pleasure or happiness. Ethical hedonism is most associated with the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus who taught that our life’s goal should be to minimize pain and maximize pleasure. Epicurus gives advice on how to decrease life’s pains, and explains the nature of please. As to decrease life’s pain, Epicurus explains how we can reduce the psychological anguish that results from fearing the gods and fearing death. Concerning the nature of pleasure, Epicurus explains that at least some pleasures are rooted in natural and, as a rule, every pain is pain and should be avoided, and every pleasure is good and should be preferred. Renaissance philosophers such as Erasmus revived hedonism and argued that its emphasis on pleasure was in fact compatible with God’s wish for humans to be happy. Either being a psychological hedonism or ethical hedonism, sometimes simply minimize life’s pain is sufficient to attain happiness, and we need to go a step further and actively increase pleasure. We should not pursue every possible pleasure that produce more pain.
12. Nonutopianism
13. Self-responsibility for own emotional disturbance
14. Healthy Sense of Humor: Healthy sense of humor brings the happiness. Psychological healthy and happy people do not take life too seriously and allow themselves to laugh at the incongruencies in the universe, their culture, and their own and others’ ideas and behaviors. These behaviors allow that the stress and the nervousness that make both body and mind tired go away. The psychologist “Albert Ellis” and “Windy Dryden” said that treating themselves too seriously make it difficult for themselves to form a healthy doubt about their understanding of the world and often makes people to becoming “true believers”, that is enthusiasts who will needlessly victimize themselves and others for some cause.
15. Good Sense of Priorities
16. Feeling of Non-Urgency
17. Non-perfectionism isn’t like perfectionism is letting most opportunities go by because of procrastination and self- damnation afterwards. “Perfectionism involves excessively demanding standards that often cause the actor to feel stressed, unhappy and personally critical.” (David Burns). Sometimes perfectionists are actually less effective because they fret about mistakes, worry about slow progress, and try too hard to impress others. Some are upset by negative self- evaluation. Further more, they have a strong need to avoid mistakes. Sometimes, they harshly focus on their mistakes instead of figuring out how to correct or avoid them. In these cases, perfectionism can contribute strongly to despair, fear, and depression. However, normal perfectionists state involves the desire to excel and take pleasure from putting in extraordinary efforts without feeling compelled to be perfect. It is setting high personal standards while accepting one personal limitation, so one feels good about a job well done. For example, the perfectionist parent feels badly if his/her child fails, then child learns that making mistakes leads to the loss of love but doing something perfect means “I’m ok.” Since the child gets older, the standards are set higher and higher, increasing the chance of failing and despair of life. Because perfectionists are often over- demanding on themselves and have lower self-esteem, and less stick– to- live, practicing non- perfectionism on other people and our self can help us become tolerant of everything, gain confidence, and retain the value of live. Tell yourself that it is unnecessary to be perfect; being average in many or most ways in just fine!
18. Taking Initiative
19. Zest for Life
20. Being Absorbed by Something Creative: Being absorbed by something creative helps people to be happy. Healthy people find something in which they can be creatively absorbed. The book, “mental fitness for life (Key Porter, 2003)” also introduces the creativity as the one of the “7 steps to healthy aging.” Creativity, some scientists say, may play an important role in healthy aging — conversely; the ill can shed extraordinary light on just how the brain perceives art. That can be your habit such as baking a good cake, writing a novel, and playing piano.
21. Curiosity
In conclusion, people live because they want to be happy and they know they can be happy. While our group is searching the first stage of our journey to find “the meaning of life,” we begin to find something within us. These finding made us think about our meaning of life. It is not that someone gave the answer. By analyzing these twenty-one simplified categories, we can have better way to cognize our own definition of life. “The meaning of life” is the awareness of the value, endowment and fruitfulness of our lives.
Reference
Albert Ellis & Windy Dryden, “Psychological Health”
updated Nov 2. 1997
<http://www.Halcyon.com/neiders/conquest/hsp.htm>,
St. Francis, “Power of the price of love”
St. Francis Episcopal Church
<http://www.stfrancismacon.com/PowerAsPrice.htm>.
Reinhold Niebuhr, “The Serenity Prayer”
modified May 4, 2004.
<http://quote.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinhold_Niebuhr>.
A Flawed View of Self Interest
(http://home.flash.net/~duus/selfintpst.html)
Self interest motivates
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Defining Self-Interest
(http://personal.bgsu.edu/~roberth/defining.html)
Psychiatric / Mental Health
(http://www.netce.com/course.asp?Course=608)
REBT, Philosophy and Philosophical Counselling
Donald Robertson
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Twelve Rational Principles
using the principles of Rational Effectiveness Training
to achieve a satisfying and productive life By Wayne Froggatt
(http://www.rational.org.nz/public/12principles.htm)
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Retrieved May 24,2004, from the World Wide Web:
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Tucker-Ladd ,C., & Mental Health Net. (2002). Perfectionists and Worriers. [Website].
Cardinal Newman, British. Retrieved May 24, 2004, from the World Wide Web: http://mentalhelp.net/psyhelp/chap6
June 4, 2004
Group Essay
[English A–X 6680]