HOW TO LIVE LIFE! Part One: Where I Get Off

In a fantasy interview some time in my future, some adversarial jou
alist will ask me where the hell I get off writing a series of articles called How to Live Life! It will be pointed out to me that I have no graduate degrees in psychology, sociology or human behavior, no background in philosophy or theology, indeed no formal qualification of any kind to do this work. The question will be raised – and rightly so – what makes me an authority on this subject?

By way of oblique answer, I will mention that when I started trying to break into Hollywood, one of the first jobs I engineered for myself was teaching a class called, "Breaking In: A Beginner's Guide to Hollywood." I figured, under the circumstances, who better qualified to teach a class on breaking in than someone actively bent on doing it? By the same logic (bent logic if you will) since I'm actively bent on living my life, who better qualified tha
I to teach what I know or learn along the way?

Who better qualified? Well, you. And him. Her. That couple over there. This family. All of us and any of us could write these words with equal authority because all of us and each of us has basically the same human experience of living a life and doing our best to move through it. So you could say that you're as much the boss of this series as I am – more so, in fact, since by doing the exercises I suggest, you'll make the experience your own in a way that no one else possibly could.

And if one oblique answer or platform of shaky reasoning isn't enough, let me offer another. All through my (adult, anyway) life, whenever I've encountered something I didn't understand, or wanted to know more about, I have sought someone to pay me to teach it. I may have been bluffing, but I don't think so: An inspired learner makes the best teacher. In this way I have tackled such subjects as screenwriting, creativity, poker, and, yes, breaking in to Hollywood. So now here I am, once again trying to achieve a deeper understanding of a subject. In this case, the subject is life. What better way to find out more about it for myself than to try to get to the bottom of it with you?

This series, then, is a profoundly selfish exercise.

But I don't think it's all that pretentious, not really. You'll find as we go along that I have a very down-to-earth approach to the subject of the Meaning of Life, and I think that's a good attitude to have. I mean, here we are in the midst of this experience, this profound experience of life, and some nagging voice within us tells us that we should be... I don't know... painting pictures, staring at the stars, delving into the Big Thoughts of history's Big Thinkers. But still we have to take out the trash and water the lawn and wash our clothes and pay our bills. For something so profound as life, most of its activities are really so mundane.

And this can be exasperating. One of the big problems I have with life (and perhaps you share this) is that it demands that I do so many things I really don't want to do at all. For example pay taxes. For example floss my teeth. Damn teeth – it has been impressed upon me that flossing my teeth contributes to good dental hygiene, and so I take on this task because I can see how it's good for me. But I sure as bagels wouldn't do it if I had only six months left to live. Would you? What else wouldn't you do if you only had six months left to live? I encourage you to contemplate this question now (or later, or maybe talk about it with someone else, or think about it before you go to sleep) because at least half the benefit of these articles, and certainly more than half the fun, comes from you contemplating the questions I raise, or the questions we raise together.

It goes without saying that this series is not for everyone, but even more than that, not every part of this series is for you. You'll find (I hope and trust) that some of the ideas or exercises I propose really resonate on your frequency. But you'll also find (I am confidently afraid) that some of my ideas or exercises just make no sense whatsoever, either to you subjectively or to the universe as a whole. I can live with that. If you carry away even one new insight from this series, that's enough. We teachers have a saying: "If I can teach just one thing to one person, I'm doing my job." Talk about setting the bar low.

Now I'm just being flip and, at the risk of sounding annoying, annoying. Believe me, the last thing I want is an adversarial relationship with you, my partner in this enterprise. It's inevitable, though, in this respect: If I challenge some of your basic, and perhaps lovingly held, assumptions, you may come to resent me. Again, I can live with that, because "the truth is revealed under pressure," and if we don't put a little pressure on ourselves, we can hardly expect to arrive at the new truths we all want or, let's face it, we wouldn't be here in the first place.

Nevertheless, I'd rather we go into this exercise together than apart. I'd rather, in other words, that you struggle with me and not against me. Can I ask for your suspension of disbelief? If yes, here's what I'd like to do with it first:

Dismiss right and wrong.

For as long as this series lasts, imagine that there are no right or wrong answers, no good or bad ideas, no correct or incorrect philosophies. Imagine that all notions carry equal weight. Say not of a concept, "That's a yes," or "That's a no," but rather "Isn't that interesting?" This will give you a platform for examination upon which you can contemplate the things we talk about without feeling like you have to get married to or divorced from anything you encounter here.

As we go through this series, I'll be suggesting some exercises designed to help clarify your thinking on issues of interest. Some of these exercises involve putting words on the page, but I want to stress that they are not writing exercises. No one here cares about the style, grammar, spelling or punctuation you use. The only reason for putting words on the page (in this case) is that writing things down is a solid, reliable tool for working things out.

Suppose we ask ourselves what's important to us. We might think in a vague and unfocused manner about such things as family... work... money... love. But once we ask ourselves to write this stuff down, then it stops being a wash of abstract concepts and starts being hard information, unva
ished truth displayed on the page (or screen) where we can look at it, think about it, confront it (and have it confront us). Contemplation of the question has become more definite, and therefore more useful. So do the exercises in this series, even the ones that involve writing (and even the ones that don't) because at the end of the day you'll only get out of this series what you put in.

And really, don't be scared. This won't be hard work. It might even be fun. It will lead you to some interesting, and perhaps even important, discoveries about yourself. That won't be my doing, you know. I'm just putting the ideas out there. It's your thoughts about you that leads to revelation, transformation, transfiguration, even, plus a whole lot of other words ending in –tion that I can't think of now.

So do the exercises, and start with these:

1. Go back to the questio
I raised earlier, and ask yourself again: If you had just six months to live, what would you stop doing? Generate a list of these things, then put that list in a safe place, because we'll be coming back to it later.

2. Between now and next time, do something you've never ever done before. The benefits of this exercise are staggering, but I don't want to get into them yet. For now, just do it. It's one technique, among the infinite, for how to live life.