“What’s the point of living if you can’t feel alive”

A friend of mine has recently been struggling with finding the right balance between passion and responsibility, in other words getting the most out of life. It’s a very fundamental question that I’m sure all of us struggle with or will struggle with at some point in our lives. I don’t believe that there’s a singular answer out there. I don’t think anyone can answer this for you. It’s something you yourself will need to grapple with. These thoughts simply represent my own struggles with these issues.

What kind of life do you want to live?

When you look back on your life say 10, 20 years from now, what do you want to see?

What’s the point of living if you can’t feel alive?

This last quote can be found in one of the James Bond movies. Now I’m not claiming to be James Bond or anything…

…but I do find the quote appealing.

Someone once posed to me this question: would you rather live a mediocre but long life or would you rather live an interesting but short life. The Greek hero Achilles himself had to choose between a long life without glory or a short life with eternal glory. If I had to choose, I would rather live an interesting AND long life WITH eternal glory. It’s not like the things that I have done or aspire to do will cut into my lifespan. Well, ok maybe except eating 10 hot dogs, drinking 16 glasses of wine, and going skydiving. But at least I didn’t do it all at once right. And if I did I would probably have a lot of glory right now.

My life philosophy isn’t just some fantasy or excuse to be reckless and go wild. It has been defined and finely tuned by my experiences and people I have encountered so far. I’m not going to bore you with my deep, philosophical ruminations (maybe some other day), but I do want to recount some wise words that really impacted me from a good mentor of mine, Dr. Keh-Ming Lin, a distinguished scholar in the field of mental health and substance abuse. I conducted substance abuse research last summer in Taiwan for my senior thesis and had an opportunity to interview Dr. Lin. I asked him what he thought it means to be recovered from substance abuse and this is what he said:

“Nobody knows the meaning of life, so I’m not here to judge anybody. My bias is for your whole life to be worthwhile. You have to do things that are interesting; you have to do things that are useful. Who’s to judge them. Graham Greene abused heroin all his life. Is his life less meaningful? I think his life is more meaningful than most people’s. So if they use drugs but do interesting things or if they contribute to society, then I think they’re better than us. The addicts who still do that are better than us.”

That summer of doing fieldwork, interviewing people, and living with drug addicts opened my eyes to this world and gave me good perspective on how I should be living my life. Of course I’m not saying that I’m going to use drugs now or that I encourage you to use drugs. For the first time ever, I felt free to take the reins. I will pursue a life that is interesting, useful and worthwhile. I will go big or go home.

And what about the glory?

Well, I’ll just leave that for God.

In other news, Happy Thanksgiving! Elaine was here this past week in Plano with me and we had a blast, seeing family and friends, eating, cooking, Black Friday shopping, playing flag football, reminiscing about good ‘ol Plano.

-Eric

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