The Greatest Life-Lie
YOUTH: To live earnestly and conscientiously?
PHILOSOPHER: For example, one wants to get into a university but makes no attempt to study. This an attitude of not living earnestly here and now. Of course, maybe the entrance examination is still far o. Maybe one is not sure what needs to be studied or how thoroughly, and one nds it troublesome.
However, it is enough to do it little by little—every day one can work out some mathematical formulas, one can memorize some words. In short, one can dance the dance. By doing so, one is sure to have a sense of “this is what I did today”; this is what today, this single day, was for. Clearly, today is not for an entrance examination in the distant future. And the same thing would hold true for your father, too—he was likely dancing earnestly the dance of his everyday work. He lived earnestly here and now, without having a grand objective or the need to achieve that objective. And, if that was the case, it would seem that your father’s life was a happy one.
YOUTH: Are you telling me to arm that way of living? That I should accept my father’s constantly work-burdened existence…?
PHILOSOPHER: There is no need to make yourself arm it. Only instead of seeing his life as a line that he reached, start seeing how he lived it, see the moments of his life.
YOUTH: The moments.
PHILOSOPHER: And the same may be said with regard to your own life. You set objectives for the distant future, and think of now as your preparatory period.
You think, I really want to do this, and I’ll do it when the time comes. This is a way of living that postpones life. As long as we postpone life, we can never go anywhere and will pass our days only one after the next in dull monotony, because we think of here and now as just a preparatory period, as a time for patience. But a “here and now” in which one is studying for an entrance examination in the distant future, for example, is the real thing.
YOUTH: Okay, I’ll accept that. I can certainly accept living earnestly here and now, and not setting up some fabricated line. But I don’t have any dreams or objectives in my life. I don’t know what dance to do. My here and now is nothing but utterly useless moments.
PHILOSOPHER: Not having objectives or the like is ne. Living earnestly here and now is itself a dance. One must not get too serious. Please do not confuse being earnest with being too serious.
YOUTH: Be earnest but not too serious.
PHILOSOPHER: That’s right. Life is always simple, not something that one needs to get too serious about. If one is living each moment earnestly, there is no need to get too serious.
And there is another thing I would like you to keep in mind: When one has adopted an energeial viewpoint, life is always complete.
YOUTH: It’s complete?
PHILOSOPHER: If your life, or mine, for that matter, were to come to an end here and now, it would not do to refer to either of them as unhappy. The life that ends at the age of twenty and the life that ends at ninety are both complete lives, and lives of happiness.
YOUTH: So if I have lived earnestly here and now, those moments will always be complete?
PHILOSOPHER: Exactly. Now, I have used the word “life-lie” again and again throughout our discussion. I would like to conclude by talking about the greatest life-lie of all.
YOUTH: Please do.
PHILOSOPHER: The greatest life-lie of all is to not live here and now. It is to look at the past and the future, cast a dim light on one’s entire life, and believe that one has been able to see something. Until now, you have turned away from the here and now and shone a light only on invented pasts and futures. You have told a great lie to your life, to these irreplaceable moments.
YOUTH: Oh, okay!
PHILOSOPHER: So cast away the life-lie and fearlessly shine a bright spotlight on here and now. That is something you can do.
YOUTH: That is something I can do? Do you think I have in me the courage to live out these moments earnestly, without resorting to the life-lie?
PHILOSOPHER: Since neither the past nor the future exists, let’s talk about now.
It’s not yesterday or tomorrow that decides it. It’s here and now.
