Post: #26

Wisdom from John Rambo

Post: #27

My family, especially my 3 children.

Post: #28

About keep living... Being me a bit hedonistic, I am in the incessant search of new sensations about what I love in this life: music, sex with a girl I like too much, sharing with friends (family as friends too).

At the end of my life I'd like to have given some legacy as a trace of my existence, this is people could remember me for having shared my company, danced -my or another- music or just having smiled with me.

I consider this even more transcendent than just having a descendance.

Post: #29

(12-15-2018 07:24 AM)Spaniard88 Wrote:  Life, more specifically its continuation, isn't really a choice. Want it or not, you'll live or not live regardless.

Although the timing of the end can be a choice.

Very good point

We don't get the choice to participate in life - we only get the choice of how we want to participate

In regards to the original question - what makes me want to keep living - I think that's a very good question.

I want to be able to say when time is up that I gave a genuine and consistent effort to make something good out of life with what I was given, and what I encountered.

I have personal goals, and I try to balance them as best as I can with my relationships with other people, and having some sort of responsibility to impact the external world in a positive way. Balancing those 3 things can be difficult sometimes though - I think it's something you learn as you get older

I went through a lot of turbulence, uncertainty, isolation and testing times when I was younger trying to get that balance right for myself while watching friends and family live relatively safe and conventional lives. Even now, I'm starting to become much more satisfied with my personal goals as my risk taking has paid off, but I'm realising there are external limitations on relationships and the world itself which I'm learning to better work with and not as much against. Life seems to be one big constant meditation and learning process, where you find pleasure and pain in between

Post: #30

I want a coupe .

Post: #31

1. A threesome with two amazon built Brazilians or Colombians
2. Laying the foundation for my future children
3. Other bucketlist things like traveling and learning martial arts

Post: #32

To experience the pleasures that life has to offer with what short and precious time I have in this existence.

Tasting a fine meal
Feeling the gratification of a hard day's work paid off
Sense of pride for myself and others
Crying tears of joy
Making love to a woman
Seeing children play
Seeing whats next
Learning new skills and honing them
Connecting with other people
Listening to music
Feeling fulfilled
Feeling ambitious
Conquering a fear
That feeling of stepping into a 105 degree hot tub

I could go on forever. There are endless things that make me appreciate being alive every day.

Post: #33

Same thing that keeps many men going nowadays: Waiting for it all to collapse and to see what happens next. That’s why apocalypse shows, books, and movies are all the rage currently.

Also, the knowledge that I will be dead for, presumably, infinitely longer than I will be alive. So I might as well do and get everything I can out of this life before I cross over and whatever I might be forced to endure in this life is so tiny as to be insignificant compared to the amount of time that I will either continue to exist after death or not.

I also have the nagging suspicion that there is a higher power, afterlife, and cosmic order to things and it would seem to follow from that that we must have some sort of purpose (that we were created with some kind of intention or thought in mind or at least came into being naturally as the result of a system which creates only for the sake of creation and is therefor constantly creating new stuff for us to do) which I have yet to fulfill and do not have knowledge of at this point. I also wonder whether or not we necessarily have only one purpose. I wonder if, at all times, we do not have several and that, as we fulfill one, another is assigned to us by a higher power/order, usually if not always without us knowing or understanding the process or reason behind it.

Another part of me does not want to let my enemies outlive me or live more interesting lives than me. And still another part of me is just more afraid of the unknown which lies beyond the veil of death as well as the actual process of dying than I am of continuing to struggle on.

If you want purpose, you need supernatural answers and belief because, despite what New Age charlatans on TV talk shows say, we cannot just make up our own purpose/meaning or decide what is the purpose of a thing which we did not create and which existed long before us. We are not God and it is not our place to decide what we were created for as we did not create ourselves. The purpose of a thing is assigned to it by the external intelligence which created it and which did so, presumably, with some sort of intention in mind. Otherwise, if there is no purpose, then what you do is not what you were “meant to do” but rather only what you feel like doing right now.

Science is great but can only give us a “how,” never a “why.” We can figure out how the Earth and maybe even the universe and everything in it came into being but we can never answer the question of why it did without engaging supernatural concepts which, as science is a toolset to understand and work within the purely material/physical universe, necessarily lie entirely and forever outside of the realm of Science. Science is great for what it is for but it is not the proper tool to address the question of “why.” The question of “why” implies an intention/thought and, for that, there must be an intelligence to have that intention/thought.

If purpose is not relevant, then what remains is the maximization of pleasure in the physical and psychological sense while simultaneously minimizing pain and anxiety (psychological pain) in the same sense. There are differing views on how that can be done ranging from unbridled Hedonism to a more measured Epicureanism or Stoicism and from engaging fully with the world vs withdrawing from it and becoming a monk. Whichever way you go, if there is no higher power or order to have created things and therefor assigned them a purpose when doing so, what remains is nihilism and philosophical materialism (in either of which, the only possible reason to keep going is to maximize sensory and psychological pleasure while minimizing pain of the same kind - Ataraxia)

Ultimately, it comes down primarily to either purpose or Ataraxia (maximize pleasure, minimize pain). Those two can and hopefully do overlap but we will always be yearning for and pursuing at least one of them for as long as we are pursuing a reason to continue on. This is how I see things at the moment anyway.

Post: #34

I think this is a question for people who have it to good in life. When all of our modern needs are so easily met, our minds are left to wander and worry about things like the meaning of life.

It's still a good question though. One that I suspect will be different for every individual depending on what part of their lives they are currently in.

Post: #35

Snow

Post: #36

I'd like to ask a variant of OP's question:

If all the external things that make you feel grounded and happy (parents, siblings, current friends, GF, job, home country, etc) are taken away from you then what's that makes you wanna push ahead? What's that makes you self-certain and self-confident in your core?

Post: #37

^^ Vengeance.

Post: #38

(12-17-2018 12:51 PM)General Stalin Wrote:  To experience the pleasures that life has to offer with what short and precious time I have in this existence.

Tasting a fine meal
Feeling the gratification of a hard day's work paid off
Sense of pride for myself and others
Crying tears of joy
Making love to a woman
Seeing children play
Seeing whats next
Learning new skills and honing them
Connecting with other people
Listening to music
Feeling fulfilled
Feeling ambitious
Conquering a fear
That feeling of stepping into a 105 degree hot tub

I could go on forever. There are endless things that make me appreciate being alive every day.

General Stalin has nailed it right there.

That list might be different for different people, but you get the gist.

THis book changed my life, and the way I see happiness:


Stumbling on Happiness -Daniel-Gilbert

Gilbert's central thesis is that, through perception and cognitive biases, people imagine the future poorly, in particular what will make them happy. He argues that imagination fails in three ways.

Imagination tends to add and remove details, but people do not realize that key details may be fabricated or missing from the imagined scenario.
Imagined futures (and pasts) are more like the present than they actually will be (or were).

Imagination fails to realize that things will feel different once they actually happen—most notably, the psychological immune system will make bad things feel not so bad as they are imagined to feel.

The advice Gilbert offers is to use other people's experiences to predict the future, instead of imagining it. It is surprising how similar people are in much of their experiences, he says. He does not expect too many people to heed this advice, as our culture, accompanied by various thinking tendencies, is against this method of decision making.

Also, Gilbert covers the topic of 'filling in' or the frequent use of patterns, by the mind, to connect events which we do actually recall with other events we expect or anticipate fit into the expected experience. This 'filling in' is also used by our eyes and optic nerves to remove our blind spot or scotoma, and instead substitute what our mind expects to be present in the blind spot.

The book is written for the layperson, generally avoiding abstruse terminology and explaining common quirks of reasoning through simple experiments that exploited them.

Post: #39

(12-13-2018 09:09 PM)H1N1 Wrote:  Honestly it is a struggle for me to get into bed when life is good. And I often lie there resenting the need to sleep, get a couple of hours and wake up buzzing to be up and back at it.

I am coming to the end of a hugely successful trip, I am running a couple of very interesting things at the moment, which mean I haven’t had more than 3 hours sleep per night since Saturday. I am not tired at all. Rather than getting out of bed in the morning, it is the act of paying lip service to sleep which I resent.

I had a setback last year which had me in a bit of a funk for quite a while - probably about 6 months. It really seemed like a disaster at the time. It undid 7 years of hard work over night in some respects, and cost me millions. Actually it has absolutely made me - the opportunities that are just relentlessly coming my way as a result of the competence and resilience I developed are frankly ridiculous. All of life tastes so sweet, as much for the pain and frustration as for the successes.

I suppose I now see life more as a timeline than any given day as a distinct event. The mundane days where you just do the rote stuff, the days and weeks and months where you just navigate disaster, and the periods where everything you touch turns to gold - they are all paint on the canvas and I appreciate the shades and hues they all add to my picture.

All this is to say that it is simply the chance to be a vigorous and enthusiastic participant in the world is reason enough - it is the great game, and you get to be in it. Maybe if you work hard and get some breaks you can even influence it a bit. Pretty cool.

I went in for the +1 rep...... but I was two years to late (I repped you a few years ago)

Solid post sir!

Post: #40

Dorothy Parker covered this one in 1926.

Resumé

BY DOROTHY PARKER

Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren’t lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.

Post: #41

(12-18-2018 11:02 AM)Cr33pin Wrote:  

(12-13-2018 09:09 PM)H1N1 Wrote:  Honestly it is a struggle for me to get into bed when life is good. And I often lie there resenting the need to sleep, get a couple of hours and wake up buzzing to be up and back at it.

I am coming to the end of a hugely successful trip, I am running a couple of very interesting things at the moment, which mean I haven’t had more than 3 hours sleep per night since Saturday. I am not tired at all. Rather than getting out of bed in the morning, it is the act of paying lip service to sleep which I resent.

I had a setback last year which had me in a bit of a funk for quite a while - probably about 6 months. It really seemed like a disaster at the time. It undid 7 years of hard work over night in some respects, and cost me millions. Actually it has absolutely made me - the opportunities that are just relentlessly coming my way as a result of the competence and resilience I developed are frankly ridiculous. All of life tastes so sweet, as much for the pain and frustration as for the successes.

I suppose I now see life more as a timeline than any given day as a distinct event. The mundane days where you just do the rote stuff, the days and weeks and months where you just navigate disaster, and the periods where everything you touch turns to gold - they are all paint on the canvas and I appreciate the shades and hues they all add to my picture.

All this is to say that it is simply the chance to be a vigorous and enthusiastic participant in the world is reason enough - it is the great game, and you get to be in it. Maybe if you work hard and get some breaks you can even influence it a bit. Pretty cool.

I went in for the +1 rep...... but I was two years to late (I repped you a few years ago)

Solid post sir!

Thank you, you're one of my favourite posters here, so to hear you've felt suitably motivated to rep me twice now is a great compliment. I appreciate it.

Post: #42

What makes you want to keep living?

Knowing things can always get better as long as I keep on living... If I am no longer living the odds of things improving are at a solid zero. I went through some tough and dark times in my life where it seemed all was lost and hopeless. I would say I even came close to ending it all myself, however I learned that I didn't have it in me to go that route. So since that was no longer a option I had to look at viable options that could improve my situation and I did. An I worked my way out of that dark place and ended up having some of the most amazing years of my life. So that experience has instilled in me the fact that things can always get better an that gives me hope for the future. Life seems like a series of highs and lows.... you just gotta take them as they come and make the best out of both.

I will add a little story here that is relevant to the rest of my post and the reason I was actually browsing the Life section this morning. Last night I had a random moment in a dream that felt very powerful when I awoke. Before I get to that brief encounter in the dream I will tell the real life events that lay everything out.

I used to work with a guy we will call T. While I worked with T we were friends but after I left that job we never really kept in any kind of contact. We would say hello when we saw each other in public but that was about it. An of course we were friends on Facebook. Years ago I noticed that T was posting some pretty dark dark things on Facebook... depressed/suicidal type post. The trend went on for weeks if not a month and then I decided to reach out to him one day when I saw him active on the Facebook messenger. It didn't take long in the conversation for him to confess his hopeless feelings and then the conversation touched on the suicidal side of things. This all happened after my dark period that I mentioned above and I shared with him that time in my life and how after I got through it I had some of the best years of my life... he was shocked to hear this cause I never really seemed the depressed type. We chatted a lot for a week or so and then we kind of tapered off. However I noticed the dark post on his Facebook stopped an were replaced with more optimistic and positive post. This alone was enough to make me feel very happy that possibly I had played a role in helping someone who desperately needed it at the time. Sometime almost a year later he wrote me and thanked me for our chats and said it really helped get him through... thats something I will never forget and something I'm insanely proud of. Now fast forward a few years and he is doing very well and has a new serious gf and they announce she is pregnant. To me this is amazing thinking of how he had gone from one extreme to the other, it truly gave me a since of joy and hope.... well they end up having a miscarriage and lose the child which is devastating. Hearing that news pretty much negated all the joy I had in the original turn around of this young mans life.... A few years later I see they are expecting again and this time they have a beautiful healthy baby girl!! This to me is just true testament to the fact that dark times don't last forever. NOW this is where the dream comes into play.... so for whatever reason last night in my dream I was working in the Home Depot and T walks by with a beautiful little blonde hair blue eyed girl latched on to his leg and says hello to me in passing and I can feel the love that he has for that little girl and I can feel the love the little girl has for him and..... it was very powerful to say the least. Sure its just a dream but even when I woke up it was still a very powerful and moving experience. An that lead me here to the life section which lead me to post in this thread......

Post: #43

(12-13-2018 05:16 PM)topdog Wrote:  The neverending supply of knowledge to be learnt, places to visit, books to read, food to taste, booze to drink, and women to enjoy.

This is on point. These things get me out of my bed every day: The amount of languages that you can learn, the new cultures you can explore, the political developments in many countries (Venezuela,..), Your business that you can grow, improve your physical condition and learn everything about it, learning new sports (MMA, BJJ,..), sleeping with a new woman you just learnt the language from, learning how to cook new dishes, being good at adventure sports (Diving,..).

Post: #44

These last few years life has been difficult beyond imagine (depression, anyone who is in a similar position message me, I have advice and would like to help). And to be quite honest, every month more of me becomes numb (the last 4years)...

So in reality, yes God helps but it’s the thought that things HAVE to get better they just do at some point. Life can put you in places you never imagined. At 25 I had over 100k in the bank, no loans, plus a 401k... a few years later I don’t have much of that left (medical bills). And doctors telling you they have never had a patient try so many treatments as you. Internal pain that’s so unimaginable and harsh you
cant even hold a normal conversation with someone.

So. Just knowing tomorrow might bring hope...

Post: #45

I have sons that have to become men one day and they need me. I can’t let them see me fail or falter.

Post: #46

BECOMING A SUPERHUMAN, that is what keep me living.

Physically, mentally, economically, in relationships...
Just being the best i can be, and how i am so far away from that i need to keep living.
When i die, i wanna die being BIG, not just a crap.

Post: #47

Knowing that one day soon, I'll be a father. Also drinking really good coffee and going to the gym. I've never needed much to make me happy.

Post: #48

(12-13-2018 06:26 PM)scotian Wrote:  Vagina.

What if the vagina is sleeping in bed with you

Post: #49

(02-12-2019 04:33 AM)Unikorn Wrote:  When i die, i wanna die being BIG, not just a crap.

I hear this being said by a young Al Pacino wearing a white suit with a thick Cuban in his mouth.

Post: #50

Purpose.
Not money. But purpose.
If you know what you're good at, and you have passion for it, everything else falls into place.