A few days ago, I was talking with my friend, Yoshiki, and together, we found something very significant…at least for my quest to find ‘the meaning of life’.
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One of my favourite comedians once said during his standup,
“My grandma said everyone meets other humans to either give or take, and I think everyone wants to hear that.”
It weirdly stuck with me for a while. And I was thinking, I wanna be a giver in the course of my life. So that is the one side of the story.
And then, we were also talking about what would be “life goal” or “life motivation”. We do know that we won’t be happy ever if we pursue whatever other people are pursuing, namely fame, money, girls, having “happy” family and etc, which basically means that we have to come up with those goals by ourselves somehow…but how? And he mentioned his encounter with a professor of Kyoto who is 40 years old, and his conversation with him. Basically, he asked “I’m scary for not knowing in which direction my life is going. Can you possibly tell me when I will be able to figure that out and feel secure?”, then the answer was
“You know what, I am STILL scary.”
And that is coming from a person with such a clever mind (like he is not just “go-with-flow kind of person, he actually THINKS). And let’s be clear here: being scary is not like being afraid of something. It is more of the mix of excitement and concern for not knowing what comes next.
Then, our conversation went to the bodybuilder Jay Cutler, 4 times Mr. Olympia who’s around 50 years of age but still working out everyday. So I told him, “I wanna be like him, and not like Schwarzenegger. I mean, about the attitude towards working out. I’m not judging Arnold’s work as an actor or a politician. But as a bodybuilder, Jay has never stopped. Even after having to retire from competition, he still does his best to be better everyday and just by watching him workout, I, and many others, can take away lots of valuable knowledge, information and passion. I wanna be like that. I wanna influence people by doing what I do best, not by telling people what to do.”
Then, it all came back to the giver and taker. When we are all studying in school, we are mostly takers; being taught from teachers, provided from parents. And then, after becoming “adults”, we start giving to people, mostly by doing whatever the jobs we have to do, or supporting our aging parents. That was what I thought, or everyone still thinks, I guess. But then, Yoshiki said,
“ It doesn’t mean you’re gonna be a complete “giver”, you will still be a taker more or less.”
This clicked with me. It was the “Aha!” moment. We are still gonna be a giver AND taker, and as a matter of fact, we have been a giver AND taker for all of our life. It is just the change in balance of these two. Even when we get old, there are going to be things that we don’t know, which means learning just never ends, forever a taker. BUT, as our knowledge and experience accumulate on its own, there are going to be more and more opportunities we can give to others. So I guess that is one of my goals; Never stop learning, and then at the same time, also being a great teacher for others. The concern for that is, I’ll be forever scary. My values are going to be changed, or has to be changed on everyday basis. There won’t be any moment I’m gonna feel “being stable” ever. I’ll face a new challenge after another. Is it healthy mentally? I don’t know! There you go! That’s the feeling. I just have to learn to feel secure in such an unstable circumstances. But there’s one thing that could help me a lot and that is reading. Reading is the most time efficient way of learning and obtaining valuable knowledge. It is just like “buying time”. We can obtain precious knowledge just by sitting there and reading a book. Of course that wouldn’t be exactly the same as the real experience for sure. But no one can possibly experience everything. So for time being, explore more, learn new things and read tons of book!
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