WEDNESDAY, 23 JUNE 2004
Four years ago, I also thought of myself as a writer, but on a daily basis, from getting up in the morning to going to bed at night, I was, for all practical purposes, my income-generating profession. What was this income-generating profession? I was an English teacher who, in all honesty, mostly failed in the job I was hired to do, five days a week. I thought of myself as a writer, and I did write (the entire “Personal Agenda: Book One” is proof), but I did not have the confidence in myself and my identity that I have now. I was, to a large extent, an unfulfilled, frustrated person, because I was unfulfilled and frustrated in my job.
Five hundred years ago in Europe – during the pre-industrial era, the position of the family in the feudal hierarchy was one of the key determinants of personal identity, at least as far as the community was concerned in whose midst the person found him- or herself. The economic role a person had to fulfil (if it were necessary at all for him or her to perform any kind of labour) was also linked, to a significant degree, to birth.
It can therefore be said that identity in Europe 500 years ago was largely dictated by chance – where the person was born, and the position of his or her family in the feudal hierarchy, and also by the needs of the community – which, together with parentage, determined the person’s economic role.
Since the voyages of discovery and the subsequent economic, political, scientific and industrial revolutions, profession has entered the arena as an additional and crucial determinant of identity. People who live out their lives in the industrialised world have, to some extent, a choice of what role they want to play in the community, which specific needs of the community they want to fulfil, and even where they want to play this role and fulfil these needs, or in what community. Financial ability can also be mentioned as a further factor affecting people’s view of themselves and how they define their identity. Money is also a great equaliser – stories of people who were born in the gutter and end up in palaces are still rare, but they do occur.
When it comes to the question of who you are, most people still look at the cards they were dealt that determine status and role in society – place of birth, gender, appearance and talents, socio-economic status of the family, and specifically in the case of adults, profession.
Most of these thoughts have already been noted in this literary project. What is the point of mentioning them again?
It was until recently a private pleasure for me to believe I expose the “truth” to people who have perhaps believed that a good job and lots of money are the best they can ever hope to strive for in life. I wanted to beckon such people closer, unlock a small antique box, and inside they would see a Greater Truth: “You do not know your TRUE self! What you are at this stage of your life is just a result of fate, your environment, and events that differentiate your life from that of the next person. You live under the illusion that you know who you are; an illusion that nevertheless enables you to function as an Individual in This Time and Place.”
The implication was that only when you look into your own soul and identify your “true self” can you finally claim full humanity, can you declare that you (finally) know who you “really” are. I thought that to discover – or to define – your “true self” was the Grand Prize at the end of a long and intensely personal journey.
However, new insights have started to undermine these views. (These fresh insights have also already been mentioned, but seeing that this touches on the topic of the value of a single human life, I reckon it is okay to revisit the issue.) What then, would I regard as more important than the discovery and defining of the “true self”? The answer: RESULTS OF YOUR LIFE.
We all arrive as small bundles of flesh and blood on this planet, we scream out our humanity to anyone who wants to hear, get older and bigger and eventually the day arrives when we leave the show. The question, at the final count, should not be whether you existed and functioned as your own True Self, but what results you leave behind from your time on this planet.
Has your life produced more positive than negative results? Will the world breathe a sigh of relief when you finally utter your last words? Have you only endeavoured to satisfy your own needs, and to be as happy as possible for as long as possible? Is it important for you to leave behind positive results of your existence? What, indeed, are positive results? These are questions that every person can and should answer for him or herself.
I have discovered a few principles and implemented a few measures that make it possible for me to function as a fairly normal adult in the world and time in which I was born. I have also discovered that life outside my apartment door is to a large extent a game and that if you manage to decipher the rules and reconcile yourself to these rules to a satisfactory degree, it may just be possible for you to lead a happy life, and to declare at the end of it that your life was worth living.
Yet, if I have the option, I would want to live my life as a conscious effort to achieve more positive than negative results that I can leave behind, rather than to just know I was happy, and that my life was worth living, or even that I succeeded in finding my “true self”. (What is the value of a highly developed awareness of your own self, if it is not ultimately conducive to leaving behind positive results from your time on this planet?)
Can one go further and ask about the results of every day? Every week? Okay then, the average results of every year? Can you purchase “positive results” shortly before the end of your life? Who determines the quality of these results? And what is the possibility that the beauty of a single day or even a single moment can get lost in the rush to leave behind a positive legacy of your existence?
Regardless of what you believe about the value and meaning of your own life, or about what makes your life worth living, regardless of the weight you attach to results of your life, one thing remains: YOUR LIFE WILL ULTIMATELY PRODUCE RESULTS. Whether these results will be more positive than negative depends to a large extent on yourself and the choices you make on a daily basis.
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