What is the point of life, if we are not truly alive?

What is the point of existing, untouched by the flame of your soul? 

I have often asked myself these questions. Personally, I don’t think there is a point. There can be no real life when the very essence of life is lost. 

But how do we begin to live?

Death

“We come from a dark abyss, we end in a dark abyss, and we call the luminous interval life.”

– Nikos Kazantzakis, The Saviors of God

It might seem counter-intuitive, but there is no path to life without first embracing the inevitability of death. 

We’re all headed for the dark abyss – it’s just a matter of time. We all know this. 

Still, most people shudder at the thought of death. Sometimes they scramble all their lives trying to avoid it. It’s futile. Running away only robs you of living fully. This is one of the greatest teachings of the ancient world, widely attributed to the Stoics.

Facing death shocks us awake to the significance of life. To the fact that it is the only luminous interval we’ve got. The only “something, rather than nothing” there is.

This causes us to ask some important questions. What am I going to do with this precious time? How can I make it “as luminous as possible”, in the words of psychoanalyst James Hollis?

Suddenly, we’re inspired to courage. We begin to take action towards a more authentic life. To stop hiding and to share who we really are with the world. We grow bold and decide to stop taking the people we want to love for granted. 

We stop wasting our time on trivialities and distractions that neither inspire nor fulfill us. We take stock of our reality and make a list of what the heart really calls us to do. 

Then, we begin to restructure our lives so that we can actually live out what is most meaningful.

Many people start to live like this only after suffering a near death experience or being diagnosed with a terminal illness. But why wait? Why wait until it is forced upon you through suffering? Why wait until you have even less time left?

Why not resolve to make the most of the time that you do have, right now? 

This is the wisdom of facing death before you have to. It helps you to understand that right now is the only certain moment. Right now is the only time for life to happen. So just begin.

Unfortunately, many people are living unrealized lives and this way of being sounds completely foreign. 

Survival

Maybe you’ve had a very difficult life and you’re just struggling to survive each day. 

Survival isn’t wrong – we are biologically programmed for it. Whether it’s the base instincts that drive us to seek food and shelter or the mechanisms that maintain homeostasis in our bodies, it is every living being’s biological imperative to, first and foremost, survive. 

Perhaps if you’re an animal or a plant, survival is enough. To an unconscious being, to have survived is to have lived. It means you collected enough nourishment and ensured sufficient safety to maintain existence for a time and reproduce.

But for a human being, survival simply isn’t enough.

We’ve all met old people that behave as if retirement is the end of life. With a pension that ensures basic comforts, survival seems to be a done deal. Even so, they appear unhappy – fearing death yet spending their time waiting for it to arrive.

This doesn’t happen because people feel they have already lived a full life, that there is nothing more to do – we all have more to do – instead, it’s because they never imagined a bigger life for themselves, one beyond survival.

In Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life, James Hollis writes:

“It has been my experience that those who handle aging and mortality least well are those who fear that they have not been in this life, that they have not been here, that they have not lived the life they were called to live.” 

The truth is, in the face of eventual death, survival cannot be our end. To live only for survival doesn’t seem to be living for very much at all. It’s an unsatisfying principle. It feels hollow. 

For some people, it can even feel so empty that they will violate their own innate instincts towards life by wishing, instead, for death. 

There are many reasons a person can feel suicidal, but one reason is a profound crisis of meaning. When faced with an unfulfilling life and a sense of aimlessness, of purposelessness, it is easy to think “let’s just get this over with.”

Having such thoughts is scary, but within them can often be found an opposing energy saying “life has to be meant for more than this.” This is a good sign that we haven’t been living by a higher principle, one in accordance with our life's calling. 

It is also an invitation into what James Hollis calls "a larger life."

A deeper place inside of us, some may call it the soul, beckons us towards something more. It asks, what about life? What about the flourishing of my spirit? 

Life

Many years ago, Aristotle explained that the ultimate purpose of a human being is eudaimonia, derived from the words eû (good) and daímōn (spirit).

Although sometimes translated as “happiness," eudaimonia doesn’t refer to experiencing an ephemeral emotion. Instead, it refers to human flourishing, the ultimate fulfillment of our potential. 

It is the final objective towards which we strive – our end goal, our telos. Everything else is simply a means to this end, done for the sake of eudaimonia.

There is, naturally, a lot of disagreement on what it means to live well. Aristotle had his own ideas. Personally, I don’t think there is an objective definition.

The fulfillment of one’s destiny is never an objective matter. 

I believe it begins with listening to the call of your own soul. This call has had many names, as James Hillman explains in The Soul’s Code:

“The Romans named it your 'genius'; the Greeks, your 'daimon'; and the Christians your guardian angel. The Romantics, like Keats, said the call came from the heart… The Neoplatonists referred to an imaginal body, the 'ochema', that carried you like a vehicle… Among those who follow shamanistic practices, it is your spirit, your free-soul, your animal-soul, your breath-soul.”

Whatever you wish to call it – the heart, the daimon, the soul – it speaks to you every day. 

It is intimately familiar with you even if you cannot recognize its voice. It is a sacred energy felt deeply within. An inner knowing. A resonance. A voice that does not use words, as the poet Rumi once said.

If you are unfamiliar with this voice, you are probably suffering in some way. Don’t be scared of the pain, and don’t avoid it, because there is always a message from your soul inside anguish.

Your task is to create pockets of solitude in your life, to be present in silence, and allow this message to make itself known to you. 

If you’re still struggling to connect with the soul, it can be helpful to ask: what causes my whole being to light up? What brings me to life? 

Everyone has something, even if it may seem silly to others. Is it singing? Is it eating? Is it art or nature? Is it caring for your child? Is it loving your partner?

For me, it is a good story – on television, in a book, in an artwork, a symphony, or a ballet. It is rococo architecture, a renaissance painting, or the myths of the ancient world. 

To me, all these contain an immortalized piece of the artist's soul. A preserved flame of the world's soul. That is the quickest way to light mine up. 

What is it for you?

Go to that place.

There, you will feel the presence of your soul viscerally and it will be easier to hear the unspoken voice.

It can also be helpful to examine your life.

In The Soul’s Code, James Hillman references an ancient idea from Plato’s Myth of Er in The Republic:

“The soul of each of us is given a unique daimon before we are born, and it has selected an image or pattern that we live on earth. This soul-companion, the daimon, guides us here; in the process of arrival, however, we forget all that took place and believe we come empty into this world. The daimon remembers what is in your image and belongs to your pattern, and therefore your daimon is the carrier of your destiny.”

He argues that prior to birth, the soul chooses every detail of our lives so that we may live out a particular destiny.

Ultimately, debating the existence of this mystical process with others isn't very important to me. What matters is the understanding we are left with when we examine our lives through this lens.

What has life been calling you towards, in your childhood, in your early adulthood, in mid-age? Why were you born, next in line, at this time, in your specific lineage? What myth, what personal story, makes sense of all your experiences?

The truth will likely bring tears to your eyes and fill you with gratitude.

This is how meaning is made. And the door to our flourishing opens.

Eternity

“Humanity is such a lump of mud, each one of us is such a lump of mud. What is our duty? To struggle so that a small flower may blossom from the dunghill of our flesh and mind. Out of things and flesh, out of hunger, out of fear, out of virtue and sin, struggle continually to create God.” 

– Nikos Kazantzakis, The Saviors of God

Our lives may seem imperfect, impermanent, small, and insignificant but out of them is born something sacred, meaningful, worthwhile, and precious.

Within the imperfection of life is a small seedling. A seedling looking towards the sky, nourishing itself with the tears of its own suffering, so that it may one day stretch upwards and touch the infinite space it longs for. 

Of course, ultimately, it wilts and dies. But in the meantime, it grows into a fully flourishing plant and blossoms a beautiful flower – one that embodies the essence of the soul itself.

True life happens when the soul is our lighthouse, brightly lit, carving a path of meaning to a fully flourished state.

I cannot tell you what this path looks like for you. Nobody else can either. You must look inwards and feel it.

Whatever it looks like for you, it is the only path towards creating something eternal and enduring from your finitude.

Every encounter with, and expression of, the soul is a moment of transcendence, a touching of the infinity we long for in the face of our undeniable mortality. 

“Hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour,” wrote the poet William Blake.

Every single human being is meant to live like this.

Let’s finally start acting like it.