Living One's Own Life #012

Hello, good morning, and welcome back to Every Dawn, where I try to give you one thought for every day. Today, I would like to read you something from philosopher Richard Taylor, who thought about how we can be happy, how we can live better and happier lives. Taylor says that one of the reasons for our unhappiness is that we are not creative enough. We are not using our human creativity, and our creativity is actually what could make us happy.

He has this one little paragraph I want to read to you. He says,

"Thus, there are people whose every day is very much like the one just lived. They are essentially people without personal biographies, except for the events which the mere passage of time thrusts upon them. In this, they are like animals, each of whose lives is almost indistinguishable from others of its species, simply duplicating those of the generations before."

For it now, what does he mean with this? What are people who have no personal biographies? If you think about it, perhaps you know some, or perhaps you've made the experience yourself. Let's say you go on a holiday. Where do people go on a holiday? You just briefly look on the internet. Okay, many people go to Greece. Perhaps Greece is a good place to go.

So, you go to Greece, you go to some online travel agent, you book a ticket, and then you look around. What can I do in Greece? Perhaps you ask ChatGPT. It tells you, "Okay, you have to go see the Acropolis." Okay, so you go to the Acropolis, you go to Athens, walk up there together with thousands of other tourists, exactly like you. And then you stand there and take the one picture of yourself with the Acropolis behind you. This is the same picture that everybody else has.

This is what, he thinks, makes us unhappy — because we don't really have any feeling of having achieved anything, of having created anything that is valuable because everybody else creates exactly the same thing. So, what Taylor would say is that we should aim to express our creativity in our choices, and this is not only, you know, things like holidays, but also small things.

When we go, for example, for lunch in the office, and everybody in the office goes to the same canteen or to the same restaurant for lunch, it is the same every day. Taylor would say this is what makes us feel bored with our lives and uncreative.

Imagine how we could spice it up. How could we change the lunch to express our own creativity? I could, for example, bring lunch from home. I could bring something that I cooked myself, or I could exchange lunches with somebody else. I could say, "You cook something for yourself; I cook something, and then we exchange it." So, I eat what you cooked, and you eat what I cooked. This would be an original way, something that is not normally done.

Or I could say, "I buy a new cookbook, and every day, cook a new dish from this cookbook." So, I learn something about perhaps different cultures, every day a different continent. Or I could say, "I go to different restaurants in this area and try out restaurants I've not tried before." Or perhaps I go to the same canteen, but then I order something together with a few friends. We all order different dishes, and we eat all of them together, or we exchange parts of them to make them more interesting. So, instead of always eating the same thing, I mix it up together with my friends, and so I get different dishes that don't exist otherwise, that I wouldn't have otherwise.

Or perhaps, I want to fast. I want to not eat anything, just to try it out. What is it? How does fasting work? Is it something that I would like to do, or is it something that doesn't suit me? I can do it for a day; nothing bad will happen if I don't eat one meal, you know, except if you have some medical condition. But normally, you can skip a meal without any problems.

So, these are various ways of making life more exciting, and I think this is something to think about when we go out to our day today. I am as much guilty as anybody else of just living the same day over and over again. I have my classes; I go to my classes, I come back from my classes. But we can mix it up. We can make it interesting. We can make it more fascinating and more creative.

So, try to see if you can make your day more creative today, and in the end, you know, because of this, perhaps feel more alive. Thank you. I'll see you tomorrow. Bye-bye.