My quest

Metaphor

I am an existent who ultimately doesn’t know where he came from. I came to a space that is foreign. I didn’t choose to be here. This space can be tough. There is one way out: death. And yet I chose to live. In this space, I take a walk slowly to understand where I am and try to live with curiosity. First, I do it only to survive, but I realize I am capable of more than that. I walk to learn the geography because I can attend to other existents who occupy the same space. I can attend in some way that I create happiness and meaning, things that are not innately in the space, things that only I, the being with the mind, could provide. The space is meaningless and I have the capacity to bring meaning to it. It is as if I was chosen to do this very work.

Explanation

My quest is articulated here as fiction, but really is a metaphor. It is made up of two things:

1. An articulation of my picture of reality (i.e., metaphysics and epistemology)
2. An articulation of how I respond to this reality (i.e., ethics, praxeology, and poetics)

In short, my quest is heavily inspired by my worldview. Since my worldview could grow and change in time, so will my quest.

The beliefs about reality within my worldview that is most relevant to my quest are as follows:

1. We did not choose to exist.
2. life is inherently meaningless.
3. meaningful living is possible despite meaninglessness.
4. Believing on a God can be convenient, but God does not exist.
5. Since God does not exist and there is no single purpose everyone must follow, I am left to DIY how to live.

The beliefs about responding to reality within my worldview most relevant to my quest are as follows:

1. The formula for living is simply this: To live well simply means to set your own intentions and live according to them.
2. To live intentionally requires adequate self-knowledge.
3. knowledge is necessary to fulfill intentions.
4. When transitioning from unintentional to [Intentional living]], you need to know enough about what you want and how you are going to get what you want. The former requires self-knowledge. The latter requires knowledge about the world.
5. A part of my DIY how to live project is ensuring that I am free of pain and happy as much as possible (happiness).
6. But then, I realize that Happiness is not the ultimate value, and that I also need meaning.
7. These arguments led me to a simple articulation of my purpose: “my purpose is to live deliberately.”

My worldview and quest defines my poetics.

To do

• Perhaps connect here all the metaphors you mentioned in _index

References

Seybold, E. (1951). Thoreau: The Quest and the Classics. Yale University Press.

I was prompted to write think about my quest after reading a portion of this book.

This note heavily relied on another note: 2022-07-12 seeds.