The inner voice is relentlessly critical. “You only get one chance to live this life. Are you going to goof off and have a good time, or are you going to concentrate on achieving what you and you alone are capable of achieving?”
“I am achieving something! I work hard!”
The relentless inner voice continues its attack. “Yes, and what are you doing with the resources you obtain from your work? Goofing off and having a good time. If you were honest with yourself, you’d have to admit the sole purpose of your work is to obtain resources to goof off and have a good time. I see no striving for something higher. I see no attempt to contrive a serious purpose for your life. It’s all about entertainment. Work is merely a way to obtain resources to entertain yourself.”
“You’re so pretentious,” I petulantly tell the inner voice, “Who are you to say what you demand is higher than entertainment?”
“I’m not telling you what the purpose of your life must be.” The voice adopted a kinder tone. “But you must have some purpose. At work you allow your purpose to be set by your employer. At home you seek only to relax and to be entertained. At no point are you striving to define a purpose for your life, to give some meaning to your life.”
“Life has no meaning.”
“It’s true that at present your life has no meaning. It’s not necessarily true that it can’t have a meaning. It is up to you to give it meaning, to set a goal for yourself and strive with all your effort to achieve it.”
“I have a goal. I want to be a successful engineer.”
“Are you directing all your resources toward that goal? It certainly doesn’t seem like it. I see you spending time watching television. I see you spending money on theater tickets. If being a successful engineer is really the goal of your life, why aren’t you putting all your time and resources into it? I think you’re deceiving yourself. You say your goal is to be a successful engineer. But this is only a means. Engineering is all about means. What is the end? To entertain yourself. To make yourself comfortable. You devote your life to making your life comfortable, and nothing more.”
“What’s wrong with comfort?”
“Do you sometimes work longer hours than is comfortable?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Is that because being a successful engineer is a higher goal than comfort?”
“Yes, I suppose.”
“And yet the goal of being a successful engineer is merely to make yourself comfortable. Why sacrifice comfort to obtain comfort?”
“Because I gain more comfort than I sacrifice.”
“If you can dispense with comfort half the day while you work, why not dispense with it for the other half too?”
“Why?”
“Yes, precisely. Why? That would force you to ask why. That would compel you to decide on a purpose for your life. Your concern with comfort is merely a way of procrastinating, of evading the question. What is the purpose of your life, Peter?”
“This is all so stupid. Life has no purpose. The Earth will be swallowed by the Sun in a few billion years, and all life will perish, leaving no trace.”
“As I see it, Peter, your life consists of cycles of purposeful and purposeless behavior. Why are episodes of purposeless necessary? Why can’t you devote yourself entirely to your purpose? It must be because you haven't yet found a purpose worth devoting yourself to. The fact that the Sun will swallow up the Earth in a few billion years makes it harder to find a purpose, that’s true. But it’s unlike you to give up at the first sign of difficulty.”
“That’s true.” At least the inner voice had finally said something nice.
“If engineering is a worthwhile purpose, why aren’t you devoting all your time and resources to it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Your employer rewards you for it.”
“Yes.”
“So he must think it serves a worthwhile purpose.”
“Yes,” I said, feeling somewhat relieved.
“But what do you think, Peter?”
“I think I can trust my employer.”
“Why? How does he know?”
I had never really thought about that before. How does my employer know if my work is worthwhile. “He gauges the worth of our results by the response of the marketplace.”
“By putting your trust in the marketplace, you let others decide for you what is a worthwhile activity. Are these others more competent than you in choosing a purpose and direction for your life?”
“No, I guess not.”
“By allowing the purpose of your life to be decided by the marketplace, you're procrastinating, evading the question. What is the purpose of your life, Peter?”
At this point I’m beginning to feel trapped. “Do I really have to have a purpose? What’s wrong with a purposeless life?”
“What’s wrong with a purposeless part in one of your engineering designs?”
“It’s costly to manufacture and maintain.”
“Is that all?”
“A design with superfluous parts is a less elegant design.”
“Yes, that’s very good. I would argue that your daily cycle of work and entertainment is a superfluous part of your life. It is costing intellectual effort. It’s accomplishing nothing. Stop wasting time and resources entertaining yourself. Devote this intellectual energy to finding a purpose for your life.”
“I have to eat.”
“Yes. But do you need to waste time and resources trying to get gratification from food? True gratification doesn't come from sensory pleasure. It comes from living a purposeful life.”
“What if I have no purpose? Then I should do nothing?”
“You should do nothing but strive to find a purpose. Empty your life and your mind of superfluous, purposeless activity. Leave some room for a purpose to emerge.”
“And what if none emerges?”
“Once you free your life and your mind from purposeless action, you will think about purposeful action. And this thinking about purposeful action in itself is purposeful. Even at times when you find no reasons to act, your discipline has saved you from purposeless action.”
There was some truth to what the inner voice was saying. “Purposeless action produces carbon dioxide,” I conceded. “If it can be eliminated, this does at least improve the prospects of generations that live between now and the time when the planet is swallowed by the Sun.”
“Yes, eliminating purposeless action prevents the waste of resources, both your own intellectual resources and the resources of the planet.”
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