So, I’ve been thinking about a lot of stuff lately and one of the things I’ve thought about is what is really important in life. The way I figured this out for me was to think about the things that were naturally put on this Earth and then eliminate all things that were created or manufactured by man.
As far as I can tell, people, animals and nature things are the only things that were naturally put on the Earth. So, first, those things are the ‘things’ that are important.
So, since we obviously can’t live in a vacuum, I then thought further and tried to think about what traits or thoughts people are naturally born with. Obviously, when we are born we can’t survive on our own so that means, we must have some sort of natural ability to take care of our children so they may survive.
Then, in order to create these children we must naturally know how to procreate. We naturally have a sex drive so we want to procreate. Then in order to procreate we must have the desire to have sex which means we naturally have the ability to fall in love with other human beings. So, that has to be something in us that is important. To find that person that basically ‘turns us on’ physically and emotionally. Which implies that we are born with emotions.
The one thing I am not sure about is how much our emotions are “natural”, how much they are influenced by other people, and how much they are influenced by our environment. I think this is impossible to measure. This is why it is soooo important to be constantly aware of how we influence children, ours or not. My guess, from watching my own children grow up, is that they were born with a framework for their personality that only included the innate ability to feel joy.
The reason I feel this way is because when my kids were babies, they each had very unique things about them but they both naturally laughed at the silliest things. I don’t believe there was any way I had anything to do with either one of these things at such an early age. They definitely had an innate ability to laugh and smile and feel joy. The cat could walk across the room or a toy could drop on the floor and they would laugh and laugh. But, when they cried it was because they had no other way to communicate to me that they were uncomfortable or hungry or sleepy. Definitely not because they were depressed about life!
Now everything else that has developed in their personality has to be a result of either the people around them or their environment.
Does any of this make sense? Basically, my conclusion is that the most important things in life are people and our innate abilities to love and feel joy because those are the only two things that are natural for us. All other things are manufactured. Possessions, success, control, status, ego, hate, envy, depression, greed, work, financial wealth, are all things that have been manufactured by man over time. And therefore they are illusions of our mind and will not ever bring us joy or love. If we took all of them away, all of a sudden, we would all be able to survive because we would still have love and laughter because we would have each other.
So, now what’s important to you?