Give It Away
Life’s true meaning and purpose beyond money and status
Money does not deserve to be the purpose of your life.
Neither does status.
Not power. Not fame. Not pleasure.
The purpose of life is devotion. To be at the service of something other than yourself.
Family. Friends. Community. Art. Science. God. Environment. Animals. Your fellow human beings.
Serve them.
At the end you wish you had touched more lives. Wish you had served more people. Wish you had loved more. Wish you had spent more time with the people you love.
Find It. Give It.
“The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.”
Meaning. Discover what you are naturally suited for. Your talents, your strengths, your calling.
Purpose. Use those gifts to improve other people’s lives rather than keeping them only for yourself.
Whether or not Picasso said it, the quote has endured. Fulfillment comes not only from discovering your abilities, but from putting them in service of something larger than yourself.
Finding the gift is inward work. Noticing what comes naturally. What absorbs you without effort. What you return to even when no one is watching.
Giving it away is the outward turn. Making that capacity useful to others, not as obligation or performance, but as the natural completion of having found it.
Self-Obsession Is the Disease
Self-obsession is the root of all unhappiness.
Not thinking about yourself is not a rule you follow. You do not decide to stop thinking about yourself. It is a habit you build.
All misery comes from rumination. I want this, I need this. I deserve that. What about me. From sitting around being depressed, going in circles in your own head about me, me, me. That is a disease.
You need a light concept of “me” to be effective and to keep track of things: a memory, certain predictions, your personality patterns.
You need the mask to be a citizen. Name, number, address, a file of memories. Wear it. Do not mistake it for who you are. You are more than that. Not a separate part inside the whole. An integral part of the whole. The whole.
But the more self-obsessed you are, the less happy you are going to be. Guaranteed.
Losing Yourself Is Not Holy
Devotion to something other than yourself, self-dissolution of all spiritual claim.
Losing yourself is not holy. Not selfless. Not admirable.
It is entirely utilitarian. A practical necessity.
Why? Because living within the self, with its “horrid and wretched tragedy” of stories, baggage, traumas, injustices, misfortunes, and never-ending complexity, is so unsatisfying that escaping it is not a luxury but a survival mechanism.
Every human being already seeks this escape.
Alcohol. Materialistic attainment. Socialization. Television. Social media. Substances.
All impure means that only deliver transient relief. Never everlasting.
Love Is an Output
What did Buddha do? Conquer the self.
That means he saw through the illusion of the separate self.
Did Buddha think about himself? No. Neither does anyone you think of as an enlightened being.
The happiest people, the people at their best, are the ones who love something more than they love themselves: their children, their God, their mission.
Being in love beats being loved. Being loved is slightly cloying and constraining. Being in love is expansive, and it makes you a better version of yourself.
“You can create love anytime you want. It’s just that craving to receive it. That’s the problem.”
Love turned inward becomes ego: what you want, what you need, what is yours. See that the separate self was never real, and the same love flows outward, to others, to life, to something greater. You do not lose yourself. You stop making yourself the center of everything.
Love is not a requirement of being a Buddha. It is an output.
Find the gift. Give it away.