The Point of Life is to Live

Of all the things Papa tells me, this has been one of my favorite.

I really wanted to be good. I wanted to be a solid, productive member of society (mostly to avoid a rehash of what happened to me when I wasn’t considered that), and be able to feel virtuous.

I’ve read… oh hell, I’ve read a LOT of philosophers. Moral tracts and treatises, books about how to live ethically or well, holy books and fantasy books with moral themes and fairy tales, etc.

For most of my life, I found those books refreshing. They promised, promised to cure me of the uncertainty of living. They promised a clean, clear way to understand who I was and what I was supposed to do. They promised to solve my moral dilemmas, cure my dog, get rid of my zits, and bring my credit score up.

They just never delivered. There was always another grey area, another difficult decision that didn’t quite fit, another hard choice about what I could do, and I couldn’t even use all that instruction on how to be to make myself feel better. I was too busy feeling guilty for what I didn’t do right, by their standards.

I have to say, not having the weight of those expectations (and the opinions of people either long dead or completely irrelevant to my life) has been a relief.

I am enough. The fact that I live is enough.

We believe, in the vodou I was taught, that this is not your only life. One of the reasons living is enough is just that: you are on a journey, a journey that spans lives. To live is to step into the classroom of life, where all lessons administered are administered through the act of being in the classroom. You cannot help but learn by virtue of living, and in the process of living the lives you are allotted, you will learn what you need to know.

You don’t need to memorize rules. You don’t need to try to obey someone’s precepts. You don’t need to make yourself feel guilty because you didn’t do something out of a book written hundreds of years before you were born. You don’t need to be anxious or wonder what kind of person you are.

You don’t have to learn it all in this life, either. You are already here, in the classroom, living and learning what you need to know.

All you need to do is live.