"Life Itself Is Meaningless"

This article is Lu Canwei's 152nd original work.

Click the blue 【Lu Canwei】 above to follow; remember to add a ⭐️ star mark~

Life itself is meaningless.

"Living itself is meaningless, but it is worth living."

I believe many people, like me, think about the meaning of life when they can't sleep, and then dawn breaks.

I recall a conversation I had with a friend not long ago. She felt that at just 25 years old, she had already come to the conclusion that life itself is meaningless, which is terrifying. Peers her age should be enjoying life, yet she has already "seen through" it.

But we must understand that humans are creatures that love to contradict themselves. Just like the protagonists in TV dramas, they often start as adversaries. For instance, the female lead might initially declare that she would never like the male lead, only to later have a romantic relationship with him. So I often feel that our current thoughts may differ a year, three years, five years, or ten years from now; we cannot predict the future or our future thoughts.

When we think about what we should or shouldn't do at this stage, I wonder why I am different from others. It seems quite frightening now because we try to affirm our value through others, and if others do not affirm us, we feel worthless.

I used to often comfort myself with a saying: the decisions we made at that time were the best decisions we could make then. It sounds reasonable, and once I think this way, I feel at ease because I don't need to change anything and won't regret it.

However, I now realize that this thought is very wrong, and absurdly so. It's not that the saying is wrong, but that I misinterpreted its meaning. It's akin to failing an exam and comforting myself by saying it was because I felt unwell that day.

But a shift in thinking brings about a change in understanding. If we think of it this way, since the best decision we could make at that time was this, then we should improve our understanding now so that when similar situations arise in the future, we can make better decisions.

A glass of water, if it is spring water from the mountains, you can drink it freely, and we can say this glass of water is free. If it is put in a plastic bottle and sold at a convenience store, we can say this glass of water costs a few bucks. If it is in the desert, the value of this glass of water may be priceless because it can save a life.

Thus, the value of water itself hasn't changed, but we define its value based on the external environment.

We hope to live splendidly, to satisfy our material desires, to gain recognition from others, we hope... But if we look from a cosmic perspective, we are merely living beings on a planet, briefly appearing for a moment; its existence itself has no meaning, yet we continuously seek to assign it meaning.

But when can we truly feel that living is wonderful? Perhaps it's when you drink a cup of milk tea that reminds you of your first love, or when sunlight streams into your room one day, or when you laugh heartily with friends, or even when you write late at night. In that moment, despite having no inherent meaning, you feel that living is truly wonderful.

The Dark Side

In fact, we can use many words to replace this, such as negative, bad, dark, closed off, etc. It seems these are things we should try to avoid. We see many people thinking that big shots, celebrities, and those distant from us are different, and thus they are much more capable than we are.

Recently, I've watched many interview programs and read many autobiographies, and I found that everyone is the same; they all have emotions and desires, and they all make mistakes. Their commonality is that they can accept their imperfect selves and coexist with themselves.

When we were kids watching cartoons, the male protagonist often had ideals, occasionally gained abilities, and ultimately defeated the demon king through the bonds with companions and his innate courage. The demon king was always out to destroy the world, continuously defeated, and then learned new forbidden techniques to come back again. Back then, we thought heroes represented justice, and villains represented evil.

Now, if we analyze this further, we find that heroes have certain characteristics.

I wonder how everyone feels after watching this. Later, the term "personal heroism" emerged; is this term positive or negative?

Now let's look at some characteristics of villains.

After watching, what are your thoughts? Just like in the Avengers, where Thanos's solution was to eliminate half of humanity, is defeating him necessarily justice?

The opposite of one truth may be another truth. What we consider truth today may not be so in a hundred years. For example, it's hard for us to imagine why people in the past thought the Earth was flat. Before smartphones existed, we never imagined that one day we could make video calls on our phones.

We see many "perfect" people, whether in our social circles or in life; they seem to have high emotional intelligence and handle everything well, appearing flawless. But like them, we are all human and have a dark side, just like day and night. We can have tempers, bad moods, confusion, and so on.

But this is really exhausting, and extremes can lead to a backlash; the more we cannot balance both sides of the scale, the more likely we are to collapse one day. A few days ago, while discussing how to build relationships with big shots, Teacher Bai Yimiao said something I found very insightful: before we meet big shots, we must first recognize that they are human. They are just like us, so how we wish to be treated by others is how we should treat them. The most direct way is to show respect and politeness.

Recently, many friends have added me; some add me and say nothing, some say a lot but fail to get to the point, and some immediately ask me to introduce various resources. Honestly, this feels similar to an acquaintance suddenly asking to borrow money. Without an established cooperative relationship, we should first tell the other party who we are, what we hope they can help us with, and what we can help them with. Without any of this, why would they spend time dealing with you? So I generally won't easily establish contact unless necessary.

If a person constantly needs to prove they possess something, it is likely that they do not have a sense of control over it, which is why they need to prove their possession.

Listening and Communication

A few days ago, I was fortunate to be invited as a guest for an online discussion. I usually talk a lot, especially in my articles, but I spoke very little during the live session. Of course, excluding the initial awkwardness of live streaming, listening is also a very important form of communication, and Teacher Bai Yimiao summarized this particularly well.

Many times, our society advocates for the value of proactive expression, such as "the crying child gets the milk," especially after entering the workplace, this tendency becomes even more apparent. It seems that if we do not express ourselves, we will lose a lot. But if I imagine a world where everyone is expressing themselves, what would that world look like?

When we are young, we are particularly impatient (and it's still somewhat the same now). For example, when we discover that others have different opinions, we might want to correct their views and interrupt them before they finish speaking. As a result, many communications become very inefficient, so listening is also very important.

Listening allows you to understand why the other person thinks that way and what the real reasons behind it are. If you can calmly think about this issue, it will be a very interesting thing. When we try to invade someone else's worldview, attempting to use our reasoning to dismantle theirs, the other party will use all their strength to defend their territory.

Finding Yourself and Being Yourself

Many people say to be yourself, but if you ask them how to be yourself, their answers might be quite similar. Each person thinks less about what it means to be themselves; being oneself might just mean following one's desires and satisfying one's wants.

I lean more towards finding myself. As mentioned earlier, everyone has a so-called dark side. Of course, this doesn't mean you are a pervert, although some people may indeed have such a true personality. But I tend to refer to those sides of you that you usually do not show to others. You might not notice these aspects in your daily life, but in the process of finding yourself, you can discover these places, which will help you understand yourself better.

For example, I don't like eating fish, but I later realized that I simply dislike the fish my family cooks because it is too fishy. Like when Socrates was sentenced to death by the people's court, he had the opportunity to escape with the help of friends, but he bravely chose to die to defend what was truly important to him—integrity. Because for him, nothing else mattered.

This is also why we need to find our principles. Every day, numerous events occur that require us to make decisions. We can also see many examples of people jumping back and forth because they do not recognize what is most important to them. Only by accepting everything, whether we consider it good or bad, can we better "be ourselves."

Actually, there’s a lot I want to write, and I have many recent insights, but I just can’t express what I want to say, so I’ll leave it at that.

Recommendations:

The Essence of Excellence

Prisoners of Thought

How to enjoy what’s in front of you, while looking at what’s on the table, and thinking about what’s in the kitchen?

The harder you work, the more dispirited you become? It might be because you haven’t mastered the right approach.

Scan the code to follow 【Lu Canwei】, and send “Self-Media Materials” in the background to receive two benefits for free.

1. A self-media tool gift package (valued at 1999 yuan)

2. An electronic version of the “2020 Wealth Calendar,” containing 365 money-making tips;

👇👇👇 Feel free to click to follow~

“Watching” is the strongest support ↘

「在看」就是最有力的支持 ↘