From the neuroscientist and philosopher Sam Harris.
It was from the most recent Atheist Convention but whatever your beliefs on religion this is still an interesting look at how we might be able to happier in the present moment, how our thoughts when left untrained can be our own worst enemy and how some of our biggest fears may be tackled.
Some of my favourite excerpts:
'The one thing people tend to realise [when dying] is that they wasted a lot of time when life was normal. And it's not just what they did with their time, it's not that they just spent too much time working or compulsively checking email. It's that they cared about the wrong things. They regret what they cared about. Their attention was bound up in petty concerns, year after year, when life was normal. And this is a paradox because we all know this epiphany is coming. Don't you know this is coming? Don't you know that there's going to come a day when you'll be sick or someone close to you will die and you'll look back on the kinds of things that captured your attention and you'll think, 'What was I doing?'
'As a matter of conscious experience the reality of your life is always now. And I think this is a liberating truth about the nature of the human mind. Infact I think there is probably nothing more important to understand about your mind than that if you want to be happy in this world. The past is a memory, it's a thought arising in the present. The future is merely anticipated. It is another thought, arising now. What we truly have is this moment. And we spend most of our lives forgetting this truth, repudiating it, fleeing it, overlooking it. And the horror is that we succeed. We manage to never really connect with the present moment and find fulfillment there because we are continually hoping to become happy in the future. And the future never arives. Even when we think we're in the present moment we're always in very subtle ways looking over it's shoulder, anticipating what's coming next. We're always solving a problem. And it's possible to simply drop your problem, if only for a moment, and enjoy whatever is true of your life in the present.'
'I suspect you could all make a list of things you want to accomplish. Of things that really need to be changed about your life. What is the significance of everything on that list? Each thing on that list seems to promise that if you could only do it you would have reason to just be happy in the present moment. We are trying to find a path back to the present moment and good enough reason to just be happy here.'
'The conversation we have with ourselves, every minute of the day, comes at a cost... It is the mechanism by which most of our suffering is inflicted: The sorrow and the self-doubt and the anxiety and the fear and, yes, the fear of death. Thinking is useful but being perpetually lost in thought isn't. Being the mere hostage of the next thought that comes careening into thought isn't useful. So if there is an antidote to the fear of death and the experience of loss that's compatible with reason I think it's to be found here. The purpose of life is pretty obvious: Why do we create culture? And form relationships? Beyond matters of mere survival. We are constantly trying to create and repair a world that our minds want to be in.'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITTxTCz4Ums
It was from the most recent Atheist Convention but whatever your beliefs on religion this is still an interesting look at how we might be able to happier in the present moment, how our thoughts when left untrained can be our own worst enemy and how some of our biggest fears may be tackled.
Some of my favourite excerpts:
'The one thing people tend to realise [when dying] is that they wasted a lot of time when life was normal. And it's not just what they did with their time, it's not that they just spent too much time working or compulsively checking email. It's that they cared about the wrong things. They regret what they cared about. Their attention was bound up in petty concerns, year after year, when life was normal. And this is a paradox because we all know this epiphany is coming. Don't you know this is coming? Don't you know that there's going to come a day when you'll be sick or someone close to you will die and you'll look back on the kinds of things that captured your attention and you'll think, 'What was I doing?'
'As a matter of conscious experience the reality of your life is always now. And I think this is a liberating truth about the nature of the human mind. Infact I think there is probably nothing more important to understand about your mind than that if you want to be happy in this world. The past is a memory, it's a thought arising in the present. The future is merely anticipated. It is another thought, arising now. What we truly have is this moment. And we spend most of our lives forgetting this truth, repudiating it, fleeing it, overlooking it. And the horror is that we succeed. We manage to never really connect with the present moment and find fulfillment there because we are continually hoping to become happy in the future. And the future never arives. Even when we think we're in the present moment we're always in very subtle ways looking over it's shoulder, anticipating what's coming next. We're always solving a problem. And it's possible to simply drop your problem, if only for a moment, and enjoy whatever is true of your life in the present.'
'I suspect you could all make a list of things you want to accomplish. Of things that really need to be changed about your life. What is the significance of everything on that list? Each thing on that list seems to promise that if you could only do it you would have reason to just be happy in the present moment. We are trying to find a path back to the present moment and good enough reason to just be happy here.'
'The conversation we have with ourselves, every minute of the day, comes at a cost... It is the mechanism by which most of our suffering is inflicted: The sorrow and the self-doubt and the anxiety and the fear and, yes, the fear of death. Thinking is useful but being perpetually lost in thought isn't. Being the mere hostage of the next thought that comes careening into thought isn't useful. So if there is an antidote to the fear of death and the experience of loss that's compatible with reason I think it's to be found here. The purpose of life is pretty obvious: Why do we create culture? And form relationships? Beyond matters of mere survival. We are constantly trying to create and repair a world that our minds want to be in.'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITTxTCz4Ums
