philosophy to live by

My first grade teacher would always tell us that every single one of us was worth more than the all the money in the world and that we were all unique. She is not far off from the truth. The part that she is wrong is the fact that we should apply some numerical value to peoples lives even if the result is incalculable. Kierkegaard use to say that "when you label me, you negate me" essentially. He is pointing out the fact that once something is labeled or defined, it is then restricted to that definition. Some labels make life alot easier but even more labels create a sense of concreteness and nonfluidity in life. This restricts how we act and restricts how we think; if you label someone a jerk then you mentally strip away other contradictory labels as to not create confusion because "that guy is a jerk." This gives him almost no room to grow in your worldly perspective and so even if you caught him on a bad day, its going to take many times more good actions for you to remove the negative stigma that was your original association. My friend Weston would talk about his ideal experience was not always participating in life per say but seeing others in their element and enjoying life to its fullest. I always took this to mean that he loved to be witness to someone experiencing the fullness of life. This always made me think because life's value is solely personal and so trying to even comprehend what others are getting out of life by anything other than maybe their reactions is somewhat naive and potentially restrictive as you might be wanting to apply labels to others experience. I mean labels in it of themselves do no justice to things like a cold ice cream cone after a long summer day or the smell of freshly baked bread. My friend Josh would always get annoyed when attempting to describe experiences as all words are inert and have subjective value to people. If it were possible he would always rather have you experience it for yourself so that you both could have at least some semblence of common ground. These labels and words restrict growth and restrict that which makes us human. Supposedly the more labels things have, the more efficient society can operate but if we are labeling everything to get it out of the way then where does the actual living come in? The more efficient we are, the more like the robots we will become. The bad part of this is that we will lose the parts of ourselves that create differences and uniqueness of indivuals. Creativity and individualism are two of the most important aspects of life and after everything is categorized and packed into wooden crates, what all does it amount too? It is a necessity to embrace and appreciate the intricacies of life qualitatively instead of trying to deal with life quantitatively.

Once you label me, you negate me

What is the meaning of life? Some will say religion, some will say making the most of what you have, and I would say something along the lines of creating meaning for yourself. Sure that is not a bold statement as anyone that has come out of the free will era will say that you need to give meaning to it yourself but I think many of those people don't have any idea what their own meaning is and so they just use that as an excuse. I think the meaning of life is simply to celebrate the fullness of life in all its darkest and brightest aspects. We cannot appreciate the sunshine if we have no nighttime to compare it too.

The thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die