I believe the purpose of life is to learn.
I believe the reason for learning is growth, which takes form as the wisdom needed for personal development, the wisdom needed to understand and constructively interact with other people, and the comfort that comes with a confident relationship with self, others, and The Universe.
I believe the sequence of learning is important:
- first, we must learn about self,
- next, we must learn about other people, and
- then, we must learn about the spiritual.
For most of us, perhaps for almost all of us, the order of learning is disrupted very early in our lives. Perhaps, for many or most of us the disruption starts the very instant we are born. Our learning is disrupted by well-meaning parents, our learning is disrupted by well-meaning figures of authority, and our learning is disrupted by other not-so-well-meaning people and by ignorant, self-serving, and malicious people.
The point is, the order of our learning is disrupted early in our lives.
So, we must at some point in our lives take responsibility for our learning.
I will use the word “I” when I am making what I think could be more-contentious points. That will impress my view - life philosophy is a most-personal thing. I feel no need to give instruction or even claim my instruction would contain any value for others. I do feel some need to share.
This is part of a Philosophy of and for Life…
The Importance of the Learning Sequence
Human beings are easily influenced during their early, developmental years. We are totally dependent on others for quite some time. That’s a fact of life. During our years of infancy, we develop deep and long-lasting relationships with people, many of whom:
- do not have life philosophies or
- have adopted more-or-less by accident the life philosophies of others or
- emulate bits and pieces of the life philosophies of heroes or
- have a fuzzy life philosophy backed by a few good sayings borrowed from others or ancient wisdom.
'Other people' includes parents, siblings, grandparents, kith, and kin. Next, 'other people' includes a variety of relationships with a range of people outside the family and near-neighbours: church people, store people, people who visit parks and playgrounds, caregivers, teachers, figures of other authorities, etc.
During our years of infancy we experience incredible growth, much of it visible to others and even more of it happening beyond visibility. We learn about others. We learn about self. Our learning is rudimentary, practical, and critical. We learn about mothers smiles. We learn about our hands and mouths.
We learn ‘Good’ and ‘Bad’ and we learn ‘Yes’ and ‘No’. And we learn much, much more…at an extremely rapid pace. When we are infants our early learning is captured by our fragile, developing minds. It registers. To the extent it impresses and to the extent it is repeated it becomes our personal set of experiences, knowledge, and memories.
All of our early learning is skewed by the actions, the needs, and the beliefs of other people.
As an infant and a child I was incapable of having a Life Philosophy. My mind was simply neither ready nor capable. This incapability carried on then diminished through my adolescence, early manhood, and into mid-life. When it comes to Life Philosophy - compared to some I am a late-bloomer; compared to others, I suspect I am a rest-of-a-lifetime ahead.
I recall, from as far back as I can remember, feeling a resistance to certain actions taken by other people. I have early memories of my parents, whose actions I remember loving, hating, and wondering about. I remember my sister, hardly any bigger than I, always caring for me and protecting me. I remember registering an aversion and a resistance to childhood bullies and certain authorities who took the form of friends’ fathers. I am recalling my nursery-school years and my tonsillectomy: My feelings and sensory observations are still crystal clear…even though fifty years have passed. Similarly, I remember registering at a very young age an aversion to and a resistance to formal religion. I remember clamping my teeth and silently accepting the physical discipline delivered to me by our school principal…knowing I had earned what I was receiving. I remember my internal forces pushing me to be the prankster, and I remember the encouraging faces and words of my young friends.
As I can recall and see very clearly, prior to and during my first years of schooling I was too young to have a Life Philosophy. Not so clearly understood by me is why it took the better part of half a century for me to figure one out. On the other hand, the need to understanding why it took so long is not strong...just a mild curiosity. I have one now and that is all that is important for the present and for the future.
I hope this clarifies why I believe the learning must follow a sequence and why I believe the learning sequence must start with learning about and understanding self. To develop my philosophy of life, I had to consider my past as objectively as possible and work to answer:
- What motivated my thoughts and actions?
- How did other people impact on my thoughts and actions?
- What improvements would I like to experience vis-à-vis the ways of the past?
- What Philosophy of Life would help me achieve those improvements?
As I considered these questions I knew seven things with certainty:
- I needed a Philosophy of Life.
- I needed to reach a conclusive decision about the spiritual aspect of my Philosophy of Life.
- I needed to use thought, feeling, and intuition to build my Philosophy of Life.
- I needed to consider, weigh, and self-test the written views of a large number of disparate people prior to finalising my Philosophy of Life.
- I needed to ensure my Philosophy of Life focused first on my needs and desires then on consideration of the needs and desires of other people.
- I needed to consider the effect of my Philosophy of Life on the people most-dear to me.
- I needed to consider the effect of my Philosophy of Life on my future work.