Life – its purpose – is fulfillment over time. We experience fulfillment as various levels of contentment, of satisfaction, of pride, of excitement.
We experience an expectation of our future fulfillment in hope, despair, ennui, hunger, fear, resolution.
We look at our previous sacred curve as achievement, as loss. Shame and triumph.
As such we may think we are charting particularly high or low.
But the curve charts on an objective scale. You are in fact fulfilling your life to its potential or you are not.
This objective scale is also relative to what you can do, now that you are here.
There are two ways one may look at this.
We imagine that more than one choice is possible. That we might make a choice that will result in us being more or less alive. We should behave as if this is true.
Although it is not. There’s no ghost at the bottom of who we are. All things are bound by the laws of nature. As such we are deterministic. There’s not much use in believing this particular truth. In fact to believe in the fantasy of free will correlates with greater health and recognizing the truth of determinism results in poorer behavior, loss, charting lower on the curve.
Article 0.0.9
