Live Happily!
July 4th, 2025
Live happily!
It's a wonderful everyday. The reality, the grimness, the abuse, the horrors, oh. Oh! How it never seems I'm ever to find anything at all. I cannot even connect with a single human being on this planet, yet...
Live happily!
Happy 4th of July.
Start with Why
Five why's. Let's go.
Why do I live?
To see it through.
To see what through, why do you want to see it through?
I want to see my life through. I want to see my life through, because I'm curious of myself.
Why are you curious about yourself and your life?
Because, I've lived twenty-five years now and frankly I've found myself in places I never thought I would. I figure that that'll keep happening as long as I keep living, for better or worse.
And why is that, why is novelty what you're seeking?
Yeah. It's novelty. It's people. Different kinds of people, different kinds of predicaments. Like Buddha. I want to live and see and experience new things all the time.
Hmm... well I've asked you four why's not, but we're still on the fourth. You haven't really answered why you seek novelty.
It's more thrilling. It's more interesting. And it's more memorable. And it changes me all the more.
Why do you seek memories, and why do you wish more change?
Because, because, because I want to know myself more. I want to define myself. I want to change myself. It is self-centered, but aren't we all? And because of that, I don't know who I am, so I wake up every morning to figure out better who I am and how I respond.
I'll break it, forget the five why's. Let's go deeper. Why do you want to know yourself?
Because it'll bring me peace.
Why do you think it'll bring you peace? Won't you become discontent knowing who you are and what you are?
I may become bored, but knowing who I am and what I want would make me feel more certain in the way I spend my time.
Why do you want to be certain in the way you spend your time? Why do you want to be more certain?
Because it helps to be confident and convince others.
Why do you need to convince others?
To make a change in the world.
Why do you need to make a change in the world?
To make a legacy. But I know that even legacy's aren't immortal.
Why would you want to make a legacy, and why are you considering immortality?
To make my children proud.
And why do you care about what your children think of you?
To leave them with a legacy, and to leave them with a motivation to do better for themselves.
Why do you think a legacy would give them motivation -- rather, isn't it the opposite, that a rich legacy encourages a poorer next generation?
I think that a legacy would encourage them to uphold it, hopefully.
And why do they even need to do that?
I don't know why.
Ask yourself again.
Perhaps because my parents did the same. They gave me the legacy of being a son of refugees. We are hard-boiled folk who have gone through a lot.
But, why do you want these sort of stories to be passed down?
To give my children a similar life to mine.
But why do you want your children to have a similar life to yours?
Because I enjoyed it for what it was.
And why do you think they won't enjoy theirs, having theirs be a little or wildly different from yours?
They may very well be. But why do I care about my children's life again? Having that they aren't even born yet?
Right, ask yourself that question.
Because they are me, no? They are my future, and my chance at immortality. They will be able to influence the world and see it to the next generation, and the next.
Why do they need to see it to the next? Why do you need a legacy? I do not understand.
Because I want the story, the tapestry of humanity to keep on painting itself. Because the story is beautiful.
And why is the story beautiful?
Because it is painful. And bittersweet.
And why is beautiful painful and bittersweet?
Because pain and love and pain and love again are the building blocks of our curated emotional worlds. They are what make the painting colorful.
And why do you need a beautiful emotional world?
To make sense of the world. Beauty is a sense of the world, and it is a strong sense of the world. One to live happily in.
And why would you need to be happy, or make sense of the world?
Because being happy is good. And a sense of a disorientating and chaotic and confusing and defeating world is good.
And why are these things good?
Because joy is good. And because bringing order to the chaos is good.
Why is order good? And why good at all?
Order is good because it is calming. Order provides structure and sense and meaning. It is circular in a way in that sense is order and order is sense, but that the organization makes the world easier to navigate.
And why do you want an easy to navigate world? Wouldn't you want a troubled world to develop the skills and being?
Because a hard world means a world where death may be closer than later. Order extends life.
And why would you want death to be later rather than closer?
That's... that's a good question. My initial assumption is that a longer life is better. A longer life means children, more people to meet, and more experiences to be had. But that's not necessarily the case is it?
And why are you thinking about children, people, and experiences?
Because I find them, I find them that, I find that that's what life is made of. When I look back at the memories, it's not the things I did or the video games I played, though some of it is, but it's the experiences and people I spoke and met with.
So why death later than sooner?
Because you'll meet more people that way.
And so, wouldn't it be best to meet as many people as you can then? Why wouldn't you?
Because life isn't just about other people. It's about myself too. My life is my life.
And why is your life so important?
Because, because... because it's the only one I've got.
And why is it more valuable just because it's scarce?
Because I know it will end one day.
Why does the fact that it'll end change how you view your life at all?
It's not that I won't waste it away. It's not that I won't spend it unwisely. It's not that I won't do this or that. It's just that there's only so much time to be had, and I realize there's only so much direction to go from here.
Why does a limited life change how you think?
Because there's only so much time, and if there's only so much time, then why spend it at all doing anything at all?
Ask yourself that.
Why anything at all?
Yeah.
I don't know.
Why are you falling into an existentialist trap -- you know your life is limited, but why does that change anything?
Because action has to be made.
And why does action have to be made?
To see it through. To see my life through.
And why do you have to see your life through?
Because it's beautiful. It's life. And it's utterly beautiful. The ups and downs. The tragedies and downfalls. The rises and triumphs. The victories and defeats. Can't you see it? Our everyday suffering, the sunset in the west and the sunrise in the east, the waves as they crash and crash over the green landscape. A bright summer day as it rises. It's all so... so gorgeously beautiful. The stories we tell ourselves, and the stories we pass on.
And why are stories important?
Stories are important, because they are the true tapestry of humanity. They are the DNA of the soul, the memetic culture that we pass on from generation to the next.
And why do you care about the next generation?
Because it is a life untold. An untold life is the most valuable.
And why are the untold lives more valuable, that is, why are the lives of the youth more important than that of the old?
Because they have more life left.
And what is life, and why do you see life this way?
Because life is the mystery that endangers us all, and the one that is demarcated by death.
And why is it the mystery?
Why, why that is the mystery after all. Isn't it?
And why do you say that, and what is there to do about it?
There is, there is to see it through.
Why do I live?
I live to witness my life.
Thinking without learning is dangerous
It is. It's actually better to just have an empty, Tao mind, isn't it?