Taking Life Less Seriously

I need to keep reminding myself this, but life is too fleeting to be taken all that seriously. Returning from the retreat this week initially had me feeling mentally frazzled, overwhelmed, and burdened. I felt that I had a duty to try and quickly piece together the fuzzy jigsaw of everything I’d learned and solve the puzzle of life before I was whisked away back into reality. But life is only reality, in all its messiness, imperfection, and mystery. There is nothing to solve. It doesn’t have an answer which reveals itself only with the right code. Ultimately, we don’t have the faintest idea about the world around us, nor are we around long enough to eventually reach some epiphany of understanding.

I think back to a chapter from Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks, an immensely practical, optimistic book which explores how we can use our mortality and the laughably short and imperfect nature of our lives to empower action. The chapter in question, Cosmic Insignificance Theory, points out plainly that, hey, our tiny lifetime doesn’t really matter all that much in the grand scheme of things. That can liberate us immensely.

The reason I return to this chapter is that the underlying theme of impermanence echoes both the experiential and theoretical understanding I’d been mulling over all throughout the Vipassana retreat. Yet, the crucial difference was in application. With the Buddhist-leaning Vipassana practice, there was always allusions to a final goal. A state in which you can eventually understand the truth about our existence and then, ah yes, the jigsaw pieces slot into place. You transcend the strictures of being an imperfect human. But I really struggled to grapple with this motivation, despite agreeing with the realisation of impermance.

Revisiting Burkeman encouraged me by realising that I can drop that notion entirely. The concepts of impermanence and meaninglessness don’t have to create a fork in the road which leads to either nihilism or enlightenment. They liberate simply by taking the pressure of us, right here and now. Realising that we’re never going to understand the full truth of our existence, and acknowledging just how fleeting our time here is, can simply be a catalyst for us to stop waiting around for things to fall into place. I feel Oliver’s newer work, Meditation for Mortals, is an apt description of where I would like this Vipassana experience to land for me. Within the messy constraints of the real world. I’ll be reading this over the coming month.

Existentialism aside, I’ve realised as my mental circuitry has gradually rewired itself this week, I want to take things less seriously. Not out of a lack of caring, but rather in self-compassion. Rather than looking at things as though they ought to be fixed, just accepting the imperfection of my reality and embracing the human experience. I might as well find the joy in everything now. Not save it all up for some illusive moment in future where everything becomes blissful all of a sudden.

On the ground, that means more ice cream and watching TV shows in bed. Waking up without an alarm. Playing childhood classics like Papa’s Freezeria (!) and Minecraft with my girlfriend—simply because it’s fun and precisely unproductive. Eating out more often, even if the food isn’t the best or the cheapest. Putting my cheapskate tendencies away just a little bit when booking our next accomodation. Tiny things. Among time each day, of course, still spent chasing important goals and investing for future payoffs, whatever that may look like. As simple as it is, I always seem to come back to a stance of balance. Whatever the pursuit, the topic, the idea—consider the extremes, but find that middle ground, not via ignorance, but insight, and embrace the notion that we’ll never have all the answers anyway.