The Best Way To Live: Forging and following your own philosophy

The Best Way To Live

Randall Leigh Laird

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2012 Randall Leigh Laird

SR1-812247301

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Table of Contents

Preface

Introduction

Wanting

Making Sense Of Your Life

Cultivating Your Landscape

I Want, Therefore I Am

Who Do You Think You Are?

It’s Your Fault (Lines)

Social Wanting

Knowing

Learning To See

Talking To Yourself

What Do You Really Know?

Listening To Your Ideas

Ideologies vs. Ideas

Social Knowing

Losing

The Shifting Border

Losing To Life

The Shackle And The Giant

Time And Tide

Death: Loss Getting Our Attention

But Wait - There’s More!

Learning

Lost And (Not) Found

The Questions

Dismantling the Bridge

Living The Idea: Centering

Living The Idea: Application

Living The Idea: Accountability

Final Thoughts

Preface

I’ve been a clergyman and a history teacher by trade. But, my ‘calling’ has more to do with trying to make sense of human living.

For me, ‘sense’ is made by thinking about my experiences and the way I live them - and, by thinking about how I process them (internally) after the fact. And, just as making sense implies forming or constructing some thing (a thing I call ‘sense’), thinking also involves the making or the creation of experience-based lessons (derived from that ‘sense’) which I try to apply in my (present and future) living.

To ask the question, ‘what’s the best way to live?’ is to do philosophy.

For you to ask (yourself) that question is to ‘do’ philosophy where it most appropriately happens - in your thinking and in your living. Figuring out how to live best is personal. It’s about your individual introspection and your application of whatever ‘way’ of living you discover and determine to be ‘best.’ Your best way of living has very significant relationship and societal implications, but, it must, first, be yours’ - birthed and nurtured and owned by you.

I’ll try to assume nothing about the way we experience and live life. Rather, I'll try to development my thoughts in a logical step-by-step progression from self-evident premise to succeeding inferences. While I will comment on religion occasionally, this is a thoroughly secular book.

A few stipulations may be helpful. First, I’ll present (in extreme slow motion) the process by which we sense and employ experience - pausing at each stage to consider what’s happening. Secondly, know that my understanding of that process is entirely self-taught. Whatever I think I know about living comes from the way I make sense of my living. Thirdly, I will be visual. A consistent, extended metaphor (the ‘inner landscape’) runs through the book - a sequence of word pictures to aid understanding.

Because our topic leans toward the abstract, I’ve included a number of narrative illustrations from history and literature and my own life. They’re meant to complement my ideas and to ‘ground’ them in familiar lore.

I owe thanks to my beloved children for their support and their inspiration. And, my two brothers - John and Tim - continually inquired, ‘how’s the book going?’ My friend, Adam Sinesiou - another tireless maker of ‘sense’ - has consistently provided encouragement and challenge.

Nancy Jayne, my wife, is the real reason this book got finished. Enduring my many hours of sustained introspection and my countless out loud re-reads, she has never stopped believing in my ‘thoughts’ and their worth. It’s for that reason, that The Best Way To Live is dedicated to her.

Writing this book has changed my life. Maybe reading it will change yours’.

Randall Laird

Introduction

Folks are blessed who make the best of every day

living by their own philosophy

Rube Bloom and Harry Ruby

What’s the best way to live?

Before you answer my question, there’s a self-evident premise that needs stating. None of us just lives. Each of us lives in a particular way. I’m not talking about lifestyle or affluence or religion or career. ‘Way’ refers to - for our purposes - how you process and learn from and apply what you experience.

The way you live isn’t arbitrary or accidental. There are reasons you view life and live life the way you do. Maybe there are some basic principles you’ve gathered over the years - from parents, from a religious community, from a pivotal experience, from a book, from a wise old man - that steady you and direct you.

If so - that’s terrific!

But, that leads to another question: do you intentionally align your daily living with those principles or do you just assume that past experience and sage advice will serve as ‘automatic pilot?’

Maybe you live unconsciously - driven by inner forces unknown to you. Maybe, you don’t think very much about why you do what you do. If so, it’s probable that your choices rarely yield favorable long term results - and, (perhaps) you keep making the same mistakes.

Or, maybe you’ve consciously chosen your way of living. You wake up each morning and rededicate yourself to some kind of personal code. Throughout the day you deliberately implement that code in your decisions, conversations, and actions - as best you can. And, at day’s end, you assess how well your words and deeds reflected your code.

But, probably not.

It’s more likely that you don’t examine the ‘why’ or ‘how’ of your living in a consistent and intentional way. I would guess that most of us don’t. Most of us live blindly - unaware of the impulses and patterned habits and appetites and fears that drive us. If that’s true for you, then, your way of living - your particular way of approaching life - is not only determinative of your chances for meaning and success and happiness. Your way of living is, essentially, unknown to you.

But, whether you’re deliberate or clueless on the matter, you don’t just live - you have a way of living.

The question is - ‘is your way of living the best way for you to live?’

What’s the best way to live?

You may think you’re ready to answer my question. But, you’re not.

If you answer too soon - before you do some hard work - you’ll probably be answering a different question. And, there is a whole list of questions I’m not asking.

For instance, I’m not asking, ‘what’s the best way to be financially independent?’ or ‘what’s the best way to impress your boss? or ‘what’s the best way to keep your marriage healthy?’

I’m a teacher. When I add an essay question to an exam I always remind my students to answer the question that’s being asked. Going into a test, a student knows the general content he/she is being tested on. The objective questions reflect that wide content area. But, the essay question is always specific. It requires a focus - and, sometimes, it asks the student to take a position on a very pointed question. The question is never, ‘tell me everything you know about the Civil War.’ The question is, more likely, ‘explain the political and economic causes of the Civil War and identify which cause you consider to be most important.’ A laundry list of data about the Civil War will earn, at best, a C - because it doesn’t answer the question I’m asking.

As I said, there are a whole lot of questions I’m not asking. When I ask, ‘what’s the best way to live?’ I’m not asking ‘What’s the best way for you to avoid conflict?’ or ‘What’s the best way for you to help the people you love?’ or, even, ‘What’s the best way for you to feel good about yourself?’

Yet, while I’m not asking those questions, you probably are. That is, you probably have one or two essential questions that drive your thoughts and decisions every day. Your way of living is your attempt to answer the question(s) you consider fundamental.

It’s important at the outset that you put your questions aside - and, that you not substitute your questions for mine. They’re not the same as my question. If you try to answer my question by answering your question(s), you’ll live a ‘C’ life - instead of living the ‘A' life you seek.

I know it’s hard to consider your questions as less than fundamental. It’s hard to let go of the feeling that - for instance - if you could just get your expenses under control and develop a secure plan for retirement and help your children get established financially, that your life would be (nearly) perfect.

But, again, I’m not asking, ‘what’s the best way to live...so that money isn’t a problem for you or those you love?’

If you found an answer to that question, you’d, probably, find a new question to take its place. And, again, you’d be quite sure that if you could answer the new question, your life would be perfect (at least, for a while).

I’m not suggesting that you stop trying to answer your questions. I’m suggesting that getting what you want and avoiding what you don’t want - and, that, after all, is what your 'fundamental’ questions are probably about - isn’t the best way to live.

The questions we often regard as essential - the ones that, if answered and resolved, would, we’re sure, bring peace and meaning to our lives - usually just lead to new questions.

Assigning 'ultimate' status to such questions will turn you into a kind of walking, talking ‘nesting doll.’ You may solve or ‘crack’ the current fundamental question - thinking you’ve arrived at some true core center of meaning and happiness. But, in reality, you simply find a new question or dilemma that needs solving - and, after resolving your latest question, you find another one waiting for you.

Unfortunately, you’re inflating the importance of your ‘fundamental’ questions. You’re thinking - wrongly - that your questions are as important as mine. And, they’re not. Your ‘fundamental’ questions (probably) fall into two less than fundamental concerns, ‘how can I get what I want?’ and ‘how can I avoid what I don’t want?’

I’m asking a different question.

What’s the best way to live?

Here are some other questions I’m not asking. I’m not asking ‘what’s the best way to be spiritual?’ I’m not asking, ‘what’s the best way to be patriotic?’ Nor am I asking, ‘what’s the best way to serve your community?’

I’m sure plenty of people would consider those questions to be synonymous with mine - as if my question and the others were interchangeable. For instance, some would claim that practicing a religion is the best way to live. Or, that giving time and treasure to one’s local community is the best way to live.

Practicing your religion may well be the best way to grow spiritually. But, it’s not ‘the best way to live.’ Giving time and treasure to your local community isn’t the best way to live either - but, it may well be the best way for you to give back to your town or city.

‘Best’ means best.

When we make the assumption, for instance, that the best way to live is to be devoutly religious, there’s a kind of innocent self-deception at work. We’re assuming that all of life can be understood by - and, therefore, confined within - a particular set of ideas or beliefs. And, we’re assuming that because the believer’s ‘living’ is virtuous (as it often is), it must certainly answer the question, ‘What’s the best way to live?’ Or, at least - here comes the tacit assumption - it comes close enough.

And, so we settle. We think we’ve arrived at the best way to live when, in fact, we’ve arrived at a very good way to live. A spiritual life of social consciousness and charity contributes much good to the world - it represents a rich historical tradition and merits, rightly, a high degree of social approval.

But, it is that very communal dimension of institutional believing that disqualifies religion in our discussion of ‘the best way to live.’ The communal aspect of religion implies that a single system of thought can be the best way of living for more than one person.

It can’t - not, if ‘best’ really means best.

If you define human nature in general terms - focusing on what people have in common - then, sure, you can make the argument that one system can be the best way to live for more than one person. But, you would have to frame your discussion of human nature in broad, universal terms. Any system of thought - religious or philosophical or psychological - that claims to be the ultimate key to human living must begin with the premise that people are the same - really the same. It’s the only way that a single ‘way’ of living can claim to be best for everyone.

To say it in a slightly different way - suggesting that one system of thought (one way of organizing and understanding reality) is the best way of living for all people is to deny that each human being is unique. And - to take the argument a step further - for any group to claim that its particular system of thought provides its adherents (‘adherents’ plural ) with the best way to live is to claim that all the people who follow that particular system are the same.

Now, we shouldn’t be surprised that organizations and social institutions lump us all together - that’s how groups advance themselves. And, it’s the common denominators in human existence that make our very necessary communal life possible.

But, how can the absolute best way for me to live and the absolute best way for you to live be the same, if each of us is a unique and different and never-to-be-repeated individual?

I’ll admit that if we both choose to join the same organization, there are common ways - in fact, identical ways - for both of us to be the best members of that organization we can be. There are common (same) ways for you and me to be the best Rotarians or Christians or Americans or Teamsters or Vegetarians United we can possibly be.

But, I’m not talking about citizenship or membership within any social system.

I’m talking about living.

What’s the best way to live?

You can’t borrow or adopt an answer from someone else. No group or society or individual can tell you the best way to live. You can certainly live a very meaningful and constructive life if you align your decisions according to the teachings of particular ‘others’ - Plato, Marcus Aurelius, St. Augustine, and Gandhi come to mind. Study their writings - I recommend it. Those individuals are giants in the field of ‘living’ well.’

Then, after you study them, stand on their shoulders - and, you (yes, you!) will be able to see farther and more clearly. You’ll be able to see farther - just as each of them was able to see farther when they, in their respective eras, stood on the shoulders of those who preceded them.

But, don’t assume that by following the teachings of the Buddha you’re exempt from answering my question. You have to answer my question. Adopting someone else’s answer is like letting someone else answer for you. It’s like sitting quietly in a classroom full of students and waiting for the smartest kid in the class to raise his hand and answer the tough questions - so the teacher won’t call on you.

Well, I’m calling on you. Consider yourself ‘called on.’ The smartest kid in the class can’t answer this one. That’s because you’re the only expert on the topic.

So, think!

Don’t borrow, don’t plagiarize, don’t abdicate, and - please - don’t ‘just live.’

Think!

Thinking, after all, is what sets us apart from other animals. We’re ‘the paragon of animals’ (as Hamlet says) because we can think. We possess the power of reason - the highest trait in the whole kingdom of flesh and blood creatures.

So, doesn’t it make sense that in answering life’s biggest question (my question), you should use your best ‘stuff’ - your keenest capacity - your highest evolutionary trait? And, doesn’t it make sense that the results of your reasoning - the thoughts you produce about the best way to live - would be (by definition) best for you?

Just as the power to think serves to separate you (and, all human beings) from the rest of the animal kingdom, what you think separates you from all other human beings. Evolution as progressive differentiation doesn’t stop with the emergence of thinking animals. The ‘thinking’ itself naturally sets in motion a further ‘‘separation’ in that each individual person’s thoughts (the products of the capacity to reason) serve to distinguish that individual from all other individuals. To the degree that each of us dares express and apply our unique ideas, evolution continues.

Your uniqueness, then, is not manifested in the mere fact that you can think. It’s what you think that’s key to your individuality. What you think is a never to be repeated product of your unique mix of genes, experience, and reflection, articulated to yourself (that is, made sense of internally) and, then, planned and implemented (and, even, later assessed) in a manner of your own choosing.

If ‘what’s the best way to live?’ is the big question (and, that’s hard to deny), does it make any sense to adopt someone else’s answer? Does it make any sense to relinquish or limit your reasoning powers - which, if exercised, would add new ideas to the great and evolving human adventure? Does it make any sense to abandon the unique product of your reasoning and regress to a state of compliance or mere agreement?

No, it doesn’t - not, if ‘best’ really means best.

Someone else’s answer to my question may represent a very good way for you to live. And, I admit, your choosing of someone else’s answer may be the result of lots of thinking on your part. But, in that scenario, what’s the real result of your thinking? Choice. Agreement. Assent. Compliance.

Look, I’m suggesting that, as a unique reasoning human being, your thinking should result in more than mere ‘agreement.’ Your thinking should produce some ‘thing.’ That is, it should produce what it - at its very best - is capable of producing.

An idea. Your idea.

If you want to live your best way, you need to do better than simply choosing from available options offered by established individuals, groups, or institutions. The best available option can’t be truly best - not for a reasoning human being capable of producing unique ideas.

Herd animals do what they’re told. They do what all the other animals in the herd do. Doing what all the other animals do is what’s best for them. But, it’s best for them because following what all the other animals do is the best they’re capable of.

Your power of reason, by definition, lifts you from the category of herd animals. It makes you a self-directed animal capable of unique ideas and decisions and actions.

You can not only think - you can also think about your thoughts. You can think about the thoughts you’re having about your thoughts. You possess an almost infinite (and, absolutely unique) perspective on yourself, your thoughts, and your way of living.

In particular, you can think about your life experiences and what you’ve learned from them - which is, precisely what I’m going to propose that you do

What’s the best way to live?

I don’t know.

But, you do - you just haven’t figured it out, yet.

There’s work to be done - read on.

Wanting

Stop allowing your mind to be a slave,

to be jerked about by selfish impulses

Marcus Aurelius

Each morning I step onto my back porch and head for the garage, the car, the highway, and work. But, last Fall - in late October - I stopped and stood in the driveway awhile. I paid attention - for just a minute - to the sensory circus all around me. The crimson crab apple tree and the crunch of crisp leaves thick across the driveway - the white clouds and blue sky overhead - the chilly autumn air - the sparrows jostling at the bird feeder - the Trans Am beeping at the pedestrian - the bacon and eggs at the diner two doors down.

I took it all in - I saw it, I smelled it, I heard it. I felt it.

And, I reacted to it - all of it. I smiled at the sparrows and sighed over those fallen leaves. I buttoned my jacket high and tight around my neck. I sniffed the distant, but, fragrant breakfast. And, I scowled at the Trans Am for spoiling the quiet.

Those sensory reactions triggered feelings - subtle and fleeting, but, undeniable. I was glad - even, self-congratulatory - that I’d filled the bird feeder the day before. I was resentful that my schedule was so busy I couldn’t stop for breakfast. I was wistful at the waning of summer. And, I felt worry - anxiety, really - that the carpet of leaves would be buried under the 4-6 inches of snow forecast for the evening.

All of that happened in less than 60 seconds - maybe, less than 30. And, none of it was voluntary. I simply reacted physically and emotionally to a series of objects - or, stimuli - in my environment.

It was just one minute of one day.

Sometimes feelings are brief and transient. They rise up and show themselves and, then, vanish. Like my anger over a missed breakfast or the delight I felt eyeing that blue sky.

But, sometimes a feeling lingers unresolved - leaving you unsettled and psychologically off balance. It hovers and knocks about restlessly in your head - like a sparrow in the attic - for moments, days, and, even, years after the object or incident that provoked it. It's 'unresolved' because you've allowed it to be. You haven't done the hard work of deciding what that feeling means to you.

So it drifts and darts about freely in your mind - a kind of unplaced resident on your psychological landscape. And, it alters and distorts the way you react to succeeding - and, seemingly unrelated - incidents.

Here's the sad irony: the attention demanded of you by the ensuing fallout of that unresolved feeling is exponentially greater than whatever attention might have been required to resolve the feeling when it initially surfaced.

I’m interested in those seemingly unimportant incidents that trigger emotional reactions so subtle that we don’t realize the impact of the incident until it affects a secondary and completely unrelated encounter or decision hours or, perhaps, days later.

I’m talking, of course, about those leaves in my driveway.

Two minutes after I’d backed out of the driveway, I’d forgotten about the diner and the birds. Driving north on the highway, I was trying to think about my lesson plans for the day and the tests I needed to copy.

But, I couldn’t concentrate on my ‘to do’ list because I was preoccupied - with those leaves.

Let’s rewind and consider why - out of all the sensory intake and reaction and accompanying feelings in my ‘driveway’ moment - those leaves continued to distract and affect me throughout the entire day. After all, if I'm going to discover and implement (each day) my best way of living, I need to examine - with intention and curiosity and openness - every experience that impacts me.

So, let’s engage in a bit of ‘reductionism.’ That is, let’s try to understand the psychological impact of those leaves by reducing the driveway experience to its basic elements and reviewing the whole process in slow motion. If I were to consider - in familiar ‘physical’ terms - ‘why those leaves continued to distract and affect me throughout the day,’ I’d begin by saying that the leaves - and my worry about the leaves - took hold of me. That is, they got attached to something in me - to some thought or idea in my head. That’s really what it means for something to be meaningful. The leaves weren’t really important - their connection with some already-present thought is what mattered.

What was that thought? I can only guess. There was the memory of, at least, two or three balmy afternoons the previous week when I chose to watch the Green Bay Packers or work out, or, more likely, write - rather than rake the leaves. There was the sound of my wife’s voice suggesting - was it two weeks earlier? - that I ‘rake a little each day before the snow flies.’ There was an issue related, I suppose, to male pride and my role as ‘keeper of the yard.’ And, there was a kind of social pressure hard-wired into my psyche - an impulse to ‘keep up’ with the high ‘foliage management’ standard set by my neighbors.

Those memories and voices and pressures and issues - those, ideas - were already in my head before I walked out the back door on that October morning. The sight of the leaves covering my driveway linked with one or more of my ideas and produced meaning - the meaning that preoccupied me for the rest of the day. When I thought of those leaves they seemed to signify or mean neglect and regret - and, maybe, a little mild shame.

Meaning is usually personal. The meaning (in the case of my leaves) is really only partly about what stimulated it (that is, the pile of leaves). My shame and regret say a lot more about me than they do about those leaves. And, my meaning is mine. Meaning, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. The same pile of leaves would produce no meaning in another man’s head - or, perhaps, an entirely different meaning.

Meaning is, usually, as involuntary as breathing. I don’t summon it or create it. Meaning is the product - the ‘child’ - conceived by the linkage of something external and something internal. A word, a smell, a song, a picture, an encounter, connects with some internal, already-present memory or feeling or thought - and, meaning is made.

For me, the process went something like this: the external (the pile of leaves) linked with the internal (my wife’s suggestion about raking a little each day) to produce the meaning (Face it, Laird! Listening to your wife is a good thing and not listening is a bad thing).

It must also be said that meaning is, by definition, more intense and powerful than the incident that provokes it. Meaning is the product of a meeting or fusion between the stimulus and whatever internal thought it links with - not the sum, but, the product. For, as we'll see, the internal thought applies itself - proactively - to the stimulus. And, the resulting ‘product’ is meaning.

In the end, it’s not really the stimulus - the incident, the word, the external object - you spend the rest of the day wrestling with. For me, the meaning of those leaves went something like, ‘tonight when I’m raking leaves and snow in the dark, my wife is going to remind me of her suggestion that I didn’t listen to and I’m going to feel pretty stupid because her suggestion (if followed) would have taken care of the leaves - thus, causing me to feel good about myself (instead of feeling 'stupid').'’

That meaning serves to answer some questions for me. Some of the questions are pretty basic ‘who,’ ‘what,’ ‘when,’ ‘where’ questions. But, that last phrase - ‘feel good about myself’ - is different. It’s getting at the ‘why’ of my feeling. That is meaning’s most important job. Why are you feeling what you’re feeling? Of course, sometimes you don’t want to know the ‘why’ of your feeling - probing the 'why' question can be painful. Yet, knowing the ‘why’ is always healthy or best - and, remember, we’re searching for the ‘best’ way of living.

Of course, my leaves and the meaning they produced are pretty trivial. Most of us have bigger problems - jobs and children and bills and health issues and marriages - to worry about.

But, these seemingly trivial meanings can drain our energy and distract us from the big problems that require and deserve our attention. Figuring out why external stimuli mean what they do is a big part of living well. Sometimes, it’s a determining factor in our emotional - and, even, physical - health.

Making Sense Of Your Life

Everyday we’re hit with millions of external stimuli. For the moment, we’re going to use the, admittedly, sterile sounding word, ‘stimulus,’ to refer to any external sight or sound or smell or touch that hits your senses.

Let’s think about how stimuli become meaningful to us by slipping into extreme ‘slow-mo.’ What follows isn’t science. Nor is it orthodox, textbook psychology. Rather, it’s my own working understanding of the way we process life. I’m going to tell you how it feels to me when I think about - and, make sense of - what I experience.

Beginning here - and, throughout the book - I’m going to use an extended metaphor. Analogous language is essential because it offers a way of ‘seeing’ invisible realities. I’ll provide a practical set of images you can use throughout your day as you attempt to make sense of what happens to you. Hopefully, my analogy will not only make the process of human thinking ‘visible’ for you - but, ‘portable’ as well. My word ‘pictures’ will allow you to ‘carry’ my ideas with you throughout your day and apply them in real situations as they happen.

Every stimulus that crosses into your sensual proximity gets read. Most are read ‘literally.’ That is, most stimuli get recognized for what they are - with no need for interpretation. The sound of a distant train whistle, a squirrel darting across the yard, a familiar billboard or tree, the feel of your keys in your pocket as you reach for some change. Some of the stimuli that you read ‘literally’ provoke reactions - physical or emotional - and some don’t. When I stepped onto my back porch that October morning, I felt satisfaction at the sight of those feeding birds. The feeling toward those birds was outwardly directed - it addressed the object (the birds). No interpretation was required. In fact, I ‘read’ the sight of the ‘feeding birds’ literally because my feelings were outwardly directed.

However, sometimes, a stimulus can’t be read literally. It has to be interpreted. What’s different? Unlike the literally-read stimulus, a stimulus that requires interpretation provokes a feeling which is (for you) directed inwardly. Instead of feeling something about the object (as in the case of those birds), things get reversed. The object becomes the subject. That is, the object seems to address you. And, the message is accompanied by an inwardly directed feeling - a feeling about you. Because the object makes you feel something about yourself, it creates a situation in which you must decide what it (the stimulus) means to you. Figuring out the meaning that stimulus has for you - or, creates in you - is ‘interpretation.’

You may pass by a person on the street who makes you feel annoyance or pity or admiration or attraction or levity - but, a week later you may have no memory of that ‘stimulus.’

You may have felt something in that passing encounter, but, the feeling was directed toward the stimulus (the other person). You didn’t have to interpret or think about the stimulus. The person was completely objectified (by you) - that is, he or she was the object of your feeling (and, nothing more). Your feeling was immediate, outwardly directed, and thoughtless. There was no need to explain or understand your feeling or, even, take responsibility for