Learning to live artfully
For this week “Self-Development” I listened and discussed about different ways to live life. There was an interesting podcast by Noah Rasheta explaining Buddhism as a secular teaching. In his podcast he talked about the utilitarian and artfully way of living by Buddhism’s.
Utilitarian
People tend to live in the utilitarian way of living, which mean that you only do things when you see the purpose or value of something you are doing. For example: you can build a bench, but with the utilitarian mindset, you would build a bench because it would have the purpose of using for a piano or decorate that corner at your house.
Artful
The artfully way of living is when you do things because you do. People paint or dance because it is part of them. Off course if someone who paints well can then decide to start selling their art, or someone that dances can start performing. But the essence of living artfully is that you do things for joy. Do things for the simple joy of doing them.
When we observe the nature, it is exactly what we see. When the river flows, it flows. A flower blooms because it blooms. There is no meaning for it. It is its nature. We can apply it to our lives and just live for the enjoyment of living. It doesn’t have to have meaning.
The human tendency is to look for meaning of things. The consequence of it is that we are usually wrong. We create wrong assumptions, and we create meaning in things that doesn’t have to have meaning. We are most likely to feel frustrated.
Noah Rashate gave a simple example of how we can easily assign wrong assumptions to meanings. Imagine a bread with mold. Bread has a natural cause and condition to have mold because of the outside temperature, being old or whatever. One morning you are going to prepare breakfast and notices the mold on your bread. It might be crazy to think the mold was there to make your day terrible or make you sick. But in many small or big situations in our life we assign unrealistic meaning behind things that doesn’t need to have a meaning.
One simple example is when someone is having a bad day and it is not acting the way they usual act around you. You can simply understand the fact that the person is having a bad day and be a support if he or she needs, or you can assign meaning to this act and think that there is a problem with you. “Is he mad at me?” “What did I do?” “I am going to be mad at him or her too”
Living artfully helps you to see things the way they really are. It changes the experience to live life.
Meaning for life is different than finding meaning in life. We do what we do because it brings us joy. It doesn’t have to have meaning to do things. We limit ourselves for experiences if we are only seeking for things with explanation.