The Meaning of Life: Try it for Five Years.

I have my best girl Melissa sitting
off-camera melissa is not only my most ardent admirer she's my best informed critic I made a video about four months ago or I spoke passionately about the importance of the intimate partners you have in your life male female transgender or whatever you're into saying you know when you really live with someone this way it's not just that you do each other's dishes you know um you behold yourself as you're reflected in that person's eyes nobody else knows you the way they know you nobody else knows the decisions you made and the reasons why at that time you made that decision what your motivations were what your preoccupations were when certain decisions happened you know you're constantly kind of bathing yourself in the criticism of your boyfriend/girlfriend husband/wife assuming you really live together and in our case we really spend like 24 hours a day 7 days a week together even back when we both had jobs in China and so on we spend a lot of quality time together you know so it may be said to some extent she participates in my philosophy to some extent she perceives it from the outside right and to some extent she's a critic of it and I think both of us laugh a lot about the drawbacks about the disadvantages of my philosophy and my approach to life right I mean you know sure sometimes I laugh about it why well how would my life be different if I could just get along how would my life be different if I were more or sinka fanta core dishonest if I played a different game by different rules we joke about it we laugh were both aware of the advantages and disadvantages but you know for my girlfriend there was a really really striking change in her life because the boyfriend she had before me I'm not gonna paint it in terribly dark colors here he was in many ways like a caricature of the average American right I mean his philosophy his lifestyle was devoted to pleasure as he understood it okay he enjoyed playing video games you want to venture a guess as to so I again I'm not keeping scorn of the guy but he would come home from work quite late at night already right and then he would play online video games with his coworkers right until like what hour of the night is something okay so he played he played video games regularly on weekday nights like Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday until 3:00 a.m. or 3:30 a.m. and you were already asleep when he finished one so you never saw how the game and he never found out who won but you know you would go to sleep with him playing video games and know that he was still playing video games many hours after you went to sleep yeah perhaps it's possible that sometimes the game was a little too entertaining and he stayed up even later we don't I'm not I'm not I'm not even guy he played video games he drank alcohol he smoked marijuana right basically every day or every week every day Wow that's alright no nobody drank you drank he smoked marijuana everyday that's a that's a big choice I mean I've never heard anyone say they smoked marijuana and then sat down to study for a test or wrote a book like your ability to any kind of focus work so you know what he represented to you you know philosophically and practically in daily life is a very very stark contrast and again let's just come back to this image I mean you beheld yourself in his eyes and he had to behold himself as reflected in your eyes right I mean to some extent that mutual you know pressure and criticism is there is there all the time right now the question I asked my viewers again if you just use your imagination thinking about Melissa we've now been together for more than three years I've made a post about our three-year anniversary when it came and went right um I've asked my audience sincerely although with some exasperation look if you really think my philosophy is so bad and so wrong can you just can you just imagine can you just think looking ahead in the next five years if you lived by my philosophy how your life would be different what do you think that would be an improvement or what that would lead you to in terms of your learning in terms your lifestyle you know if you really adopted this very uncompromising intellectual approach to the meaning of life if you start holding yourself to those standards and I'm the first person to say there are disadvantages I've made so many videos boom owning that and talking about I mean okay a great example my experience living in Thailand Cambodia and Laos other people would describe that as a success and a wonderful time as you my own father who's now deceased he always insisted on that he said look you know what you did in Thailand Cambodia Laos it was amazing it was wonderful and he compared it to other things and his own life and my various brother's life said look nobody else has done that you did this business you know as a scholar you did this you went and saw these archaeological sites and you did this humanitarian work he did all this research you learned you know this is this wonderful experience my father would insist to me stop describing it as a failure right but it is a failure relative to what my ambitions were to what I was trying to accomplish and one of the things you know I'm very aware of in academia is that people are all the time lowering their ambitions and lowering the description of objectives to try to represent failure as success like oh yeah well this was the purpose of the research project in Cambodia all along no wasn't you know you were you're trying to a call for something more and you failed you know um but part part of my philosophy is very real agony over those failures and the fact that I perceive them as failures at all I could sit here and list offer you all the wonderful things I accomplished what a growing learning educational experience those years were nevertheless for me a failure nevertheless heartbreaking and I think I've mentioned this before but the day I had to give up my lotion dictionary you know I wept I think it really was like one tear falling from my eye cinematically enough but you know I just wasn't in a situation where at any time to weep I was handing this dictionary over and I was taking my bags and going to the train station sort of thing but you know and it's not because the dictionary itself was precious it's because it represented something represented hundreds and hundreds of hours of hard work on my part studying this language and all the ambitions and ideas of the future and the humanitarian work and the political and ethical and the historical research there's so much bound up in this dictionary and now I'm giving it away and I'm never gonna study this language again you know in all probability I'm leaving Laos and exiled after people in the government threatened to kill me I'm not gonna lie to you and describe that as a success as a success but many people could and I can tell the story in an upbeat and funny way right but I mean my point is that's also a kind of necessary consequence of my very serious attitude towards life and leading a meaningful life and from my perspective getting the most out of life right and Melissa's ex-boyfriend let's let's be real from his perspective he might look up from playing his video game at 3 o'clock in the morning and drinking a vodka cocktail and smoking marijuana he might really say he's getting the most of the life he would also voracious appetite big eater gourmand ease we might say you know he was the pleasure of eating he was also very passionate about and he got very overweight for that reason um I'm not here to condemn the guy right but you guys know this about me I don't live to eat my life is not about none of these things you know I lived in Thailand for all those years and never once went to the beach I lived in Cambodia I never went to Angkor while I was not there to do tourist stuff I was not there to enjoy myself and even I know it sounds ridiculous when I go to a restaurant I'm doctor to enjoy myself I know you know we have this phrase in Buddhism regarde all food as medicine for the sickness of hunger you know but I mean I I just I don't live that way I don't I don't think that way and I mean something else I mean this has come up in different context with most of it so let's usually say hey you might think my life is hard but I get to wake up every day and be me you know it's this wonderful reward the outcome from that there's so much meaningful work and meaningful research I can do even just with the books that are inside this apartment now currently the library is closed due to an epidemic coronavirus you know it's currently there's no way I go to a library and get any other books do any other research and you know what let's be honest at this stage there's so much meaningful I can do sitting down with a blank sheet of paper just starting from nothing you know if I just want to write you know and that's the result of that's the fruit of you know yes the sorrow of the agony the hard work living by that standard living with that philosophy for all those years now I'm so look Melissa you're you're more than three years deep into this I think the absurd juxtaposition is you are really aware of how living by my philosophy even though again she's partly an outsider is perfectly an observer and we both laugh at it if we will have had the absurd implications you know I think you really know how this has made you a better person and made your life more meaningful more rewarding you know the stark contrast of going in many ways from living your ex-boyfriends philosophy to living with my philosophy for three years and there was a transition you know I mean you know really i won't i won't digress into details but i mean especially at the time when we were both enrolled to go to bake in college the idea of becoming bakers for vegan activism the question was for both of us really both of us question is to what extent are we going to be intellectuals afterwards and melissa at one point like you know i remember where she kind of threw down the gauntlet if that is humor you you know you you kind of threw a fit one day you just said look i don't want my life to be about washing dishes and mopping the floor we're doing manual labor and this I just you know I want to have a life of the mind you know I feel like the intellectual part of my life has to be a bigger priority now one for the next five years and when I'm an old person I just can't see this working for me intellectually I thought and I thought it was a very interesting moment your life because in the months leading up to that I mean nobody nobody was feeding her that idea you know my mom was super supportive of us opening a bakery your parents I think supported it as much as they supply you know and for me also I was trying to believe in that future and trying to encourage you to take baking seriously and to make this the way we'd be a couple and live together right look I mean sorry I you know this video ends up being a you know a somewhat wistful reflection on this but I mean that's that's what I'm asking the audience and I mean it's past tense it's what of what I've asked you and what I'm asking the audience is if you think this philosophy is look back at the last five years your life and ask how different those five years would be if you had lived by my philosophy past tense you know that might be easier to do or might be harder to do then looking ahead to the next five years we had one guy coming into discord and he said no he was totally happy being a video game addict for the last five years because he managed to finishes his BA I think think was an MSc masters of science you know when he said was great he didn't want to answer the question of how many hours a week he spent flake video games you know um but we don't know whether it was ten hours a week or 20 20 hours a week you know obviously he managed to complete his studies and get a job and stuff and I said to him no you're kidding yourself you're lying to yourself you just squandered the educational opportunity of a lifetime you know whether it was ten hours a week or 20 hours a week you spent playing video games that was the crucial time for your own education and you spent that play minute and guys I have a human heart people act like I'm saying this with no compassion it's out of pure compassion I know what it's like to look back at my own high school years and regret all the time spent playing video games and Melissa for you I think both both high school and university and and brief to look back and really regret that and to now be on the internet reaching out to people saying don't make the mistake I made don't make the mistake Melissa made don't make excuses don't office really face up to you know and and evaluate you know that regret okay so the other thing that's funnier I started to say this before Melissa ends up because she falls in love with me to some extent living by by my philosophy just this you know real priority on your own education on the life of the mind and admittedly the life they might as I define it right and someone else mentioned by the way some examples of so-called intellectuals who drink a lot of alcohol and do a lot of drugs which you know in terms of how the word intellectual is used that completely recognize that's part of our culture whether it's the a French idea of an election one American idea is the idea of the so called bombs evolve people who don't just eat meat and drink alcohol but sleep with prostitutes and do all kinds of things they point out look your idea of an intellectual is not compelling true I'm a hundred percent guilty as charged and most of the people they're referring to as intellectuals I don't regard as legitimate election I think that's completely incompatible with life than mine but it's been two things one since Melissa got on this path she's been really aware of how it's changed her as a person and made her life better as a person and she gets to see how her parents don't get it it's just like like other people around you I think your parents are really the only ones who spent enough time with you we're like you know think there's no point mentioning emails but you know your parents just look on like what why are you learning Chinese like why are you reading philosophy why are you reading about history and both of what what does this mean you know what they just look on and I mean I can't even say it's like disapproval or condemnation I think it's just in comprehension you know and again they were the ones who put video games in your hands and you know the I'm not hating on them but they were people put it this way they wanted you to watch football they wanted you to go to football games yeah I think that's very you know they wanted you to go to football games with them and sit on the couch and watch football games they wanted you to exactly lead that life the same kind of music that they liked like hard rock old rock yeah I have not had these kinds of bonding activities you know with with her parents okay but the question one ask is this and it means so hypothetically I would ask most as parents this question I'm really asking you in the audience and we can ask him Alyssa to for the sake of it but like if you chose to live by my philosophy not believing in it what do you mean even if you started off from the kind of attitude like well this guy doesn't know what he's talking about but as an experiment I'm gonna try to play by his rules if you chose to live by my philosophy for five years look what do you imagine is the worst possible outcome okay because living by her ex-boyfriends philosophy right which is again not an uncommon philosophy definitely not here in the Pacific Northwest Seattle Vancouver Victoria right a lot of people live the way her ex-boyfriend lives whether or not they philosophize about it right I can give you a really simple chart of like best-case scenario worst-case scenario right like where you're gonna develop yourself to mentally physically ethically another wise what you're gonna accomplish politically you know this is a life you know devoid of ambitions totally focused on your own not just your own pleasure but a very narrow dim kind of selfish self-indulgence and without even really applying your mind to figure out other things that might be pleasant you like not even going as far afield and viciously to think hey I'm gonna build a boat building a boat may not seem like a great accomplishment but compared to spending all your times spending all your time smoking marijuana and playing video games obviously it's it's more ambitious when we're that close to the you know the freezing point of the of the spectrum you know not even but because you could just be completely narrowly focused in your own pleasure but build a boat for a living I'm just leaving the door open there to some other some other vices so yeah it's a serious question I wish your parents could think this through you know which they could kind of do the work imaginatively and sympathetically because think if you live according to my philosophy for five years I think it's very easy to be optimistic about the type of person you can become about how much you can learn and how much you can do and how much you can see and who you are going to be after five years you know and I used to say that so many of you know all the time it's shallow and it's deep at the same time all right I I sometimes do regret that I didn't do shallow things during my years in Thailand you know I sometimes think maybe I should have been a bit more of a hedonist during there's really some times I kind of look back and regret but then if I actually think the time to think through positively the things I was motivated by the things I was passionate about you know and again you know passion passion also involves suffering and sorrow when I was reading in detail about people being hunted down and murdered by the police in Thailand during that period of time I was really moved I was really involved that was not some dry academic study when I was reading about you know ongoing in recent history and thinking you know it was harrowing for me I'm now you know this wasn't like the study of mathematics on a chalkboard and you know indeed when I went out to rural Laos and saw the bomb craters left by the Americans and read about atrocities committed by the Americans a few decades earlier when I talk to people face-to-face who had survived that there were no middle-aged people or elderly people reflecting on those all that stuff really moved me and really mattered to me so when he say I was passionate about it you know it's it's it's all these things too you know yes I was passionate about Buddhist philosophy I was passionate but spending many many hours studying the language and what-have-you some of it I mean like studying grammar in the Pali language quite dry and repetitive studying orthography so on and so forth there's studying palm leaf manuscripts sure it's it's funny to look back at that and think maybe I should have made a bunch of vegan friends in Chiang Mai and gone to the places where people swim in bikinis a female like maybe I should have been doing some of these things but when I think it through positively what I think through what I was positively motivated by at that time then it's even easier to understand why I've regarded those meaningless distractions so negatively right it's not just that those things are bad it's that there were things that were really really good in my life that were of overweening you know significance all right if people can be really honest with you I think their main memories of University will be a sense of despondency aimlessness boredom even self-hatred and I think the self-hatred often arises out of a sense of direction lessness I think a lot of people you've talked about this in slightly different terms babe but my girlfriend's also said things of this a lot of people get to university as as youths and they have the sense this place is it's not for me it's setup for someone else this library exists for somebody I can see this library was created for a purpose and I'm not here to do that and this has nothing to do with and you know um you know it may be invisible when people walk in and out of that library door the people who walk in with a sense of purpose self-discipline focus meaning in their lives that they're going in that library to do the most rewarding thing possible this may be the most exciting day of their lives what they're doing in that library I've situation I've had exciting days in the archives in the library because and it's not because something inside lever ultimately it's because of me it's because of who I am and the motivation and I'm bringing to and the tenacity and interest and what I'm working on and my focus right and there are so many hundreds of people walking in and out of that library miserable despondent depressed feeling out of place because they're like well I don't even know why I'm taking this course I don't even know why I'm being forced to learn this thing I don't know why me forced to write an essay about this I'm supposed to find some book on this topic and read it and write this essay I don't know was I've warned people that I repeatedly like boredom is a deceptively simple term for a really complex phenomena in your life you've got to examine you've got to take a part you've got to understand more more deeply right like if only the other people in this library could understand why they're bored and I'm not and that that applies to Buddhist libraries in Thailand as much as academic libraries in the West or something I mean the the the most valuable gift you can give somebody is not an education and it's not access to education but it's the will to learn it's the motivation right and now melissa gets the feel at age 27 how much different it is walking into a library how much different it is being on a university campus or it's like yes this is for me you know all of this was built for me and for people like me you know I'm here for the right reasons with the right motives you know this isn't something I'm the only native from this is something I own this is something I'm empowered by and you know and you know what I mean the truth is you can fail a course but still when you come in with that motivation you know that you got what you wanted out it's like hey I'm here to learn I'm here to research this make a right that submitter study this language you know when you have that fire and that passion and that's ultimately the kind of reward you know I'm trying to share with everybody the audience with you and you and you you know and you can look at my life as a series of tragedies you can look at you know research I didn't loss ending a tragedy research I did with Korean aji of Wayne and Jeff you could you could look at them as strategies right but the triumph is me the triumph is I get to be me is that in enduring and overcoming each one of those terrible situations I fashioned myself into the man who I now AM which is you know in large part self-discipline that passion that interest you know it's taking that spark of childhood curiosity and building it up into a raging flame even more I got laser where you can really use your curiosity every day and does a lot more than than light up your life you know I mean I I get to lead a meaningful life anywhere I am under any circumstances even if I'm put in prison even if all I have is a blank piece of paper right that's the wonderful outcome of going through all those disappointments and all those failures all those struggles and you know again I don't remember all the things I studied in Laos and Thailand or I do but I'm not conversing in them I can't work hold to memory instantly a particular factoid about particular kings of Thailand or who assassinated whom in the history of Cambodia at what point you know and I studied all those things in tremendous detail with tremendous passion and yet you know that's the same fire I kindled that's the same sparkler that's the same laser beam if you want to put it that's burning right when I open a book on Chinese politics or Japanese politics whatever I'm working on at the time you know and I'm bringing that same acumen and that background and that knowledge and I was surrounded by hundreds of white men in Thailand who were either going to the brothel or the beach or we're going mountain climbing or we're going to a vegan party in Chiang Mai to indulge in hedonistic you know pleasures of the senses and from my perspective when they went back home when they went back to Canada when they went back to England erupted the United States when they left Thailand they left with nothing and I left with everything because what I left with is everything I need to lead a meaningful life