The will to live meaning

In recent conversation with a friend, she posed the question: “What do you think gives people the will to live when they are in chronic pain or when faced with serious illness?”This came in the midst of the hospitalization of two friends. One is in an ICU, following open heart surgery and the other is receiving major doses of chemotherapy and radiation for metastatic cancer. Both have made it clear that they although they know death is one possibility, they have no conscious intention of “leaving the building” at this time.

Is it fear of death or love of life that helps us to remain incarnate?

When visiting the second friend a few days ago and then today, she related that she wants the hospital staff who have been caring for her to “love my life as much as I do. ” She was propped in bed, wearing pretty pink floral pajamas. Her hair was combed and she had a sparkly headband at the ready, should it become unruly. At the foot of her bed was a laptop computer. Although the nurses sometimes chided her for working when she should be resting, she retorted, “What if I live?I will have all this work to catch up on when I get home.” She also made it clear to us that if she was to die, she wanted to be sure her co-workers knew what needed to be done in her absence.

Two friends and I visited and offered her Reiki. We get the strong sense that she is there to teach the staff how to work with patients who don’t fit the typical mold. She looks far better than they expect given the prognosis and what they view as the norm. Decked out in Hello Kitty jammies with strawberries on them, newly showered, her hair being brushed by her wife, sense of humor intact big time. She joked about many things. Then she mentioned this song, feeling that she was ready to play centerfield. I pulled it up on my phone and all of us in the room bopped around to it, including her. I made a sign to put up on her bulletin board that reminded staff that there was absolutely no place for negativity in that room; only love, only healing intention. She said that she thought she was there to give the staff hope; not the other way around.

The other friend who had the cardiac surgery and is still receiving dialysis and is breathing via a Continuous Positive Airway Pressure (CPAP) machine that is predominately used by people with sleep apnea, has a strong desire to continue on this side of the veil. He has a wife and many friends who are praying for his recovery. The strong support system, he has acknowledged, has helped greatly.

What Gives Life Meaning?

When asked this question, responses included:

“The promise of tomorrow. The beauty outside. It does change day to day sometimes moment to moment”

For me, it does change from day to day. Staring down death lately does have a way of addressing this very important question. Sometimes the will is there and other times it is not but I ignore the not times. I don’t want to leave that kind of legacy to my young ones. Surely I can do better than that! Leave them with intangible things worth living for.

“Sharing my joy and how I increase it gives my life meaning. In physical illness, I know there is a way out and it will be revealed. Depression is my cry for help. My guide grants me hope. My spirit assures me it’s true. It changes day to day because there are so many aspects of me that the each require time and attention. This is me grounding, refining, nurturing, teaching, learning, exploring, enjoying and expanding.”

“I don’t always have the will to live, or at least not for myself. What has typically pulled me out of it has been the desire to help somebody else, knowing I was needed to help them. I suppose if I had children or people in my life who literally needed me, that would be my answer. But since I don’t, it’s usually the need of an outsider. I can somehow put them in the way no one else has chosen to do.”

“Knowing that we are all here for a reason… learning lessons from past lives to hopefully “get it right” this time to be able to move forward to the next chapter… at least that’s what I believe today!”

“I was a caregiver for a decade for my late husband. He REFUSED to give in because he didn’t want to leave me. After he transitioned, my will to live became a testament for those that lose the struggle, like my husband. I feel as if I do not live life to my happiest… I am slapping people like him in the face.”

“Knowing that life is impermanent. Indian masters have said that to come into a body is a powerful way to heal a soul, because we can reach out and get help. I am reading a text called A Course of Love that speaks about unity consciousness. It takes a village to get me through. When I am depressed, I have to reach out, sometimes at 4:00 in the morning and ask someone if I can sleep on their couch, because I am that scared. ”

In an article written by John Grohol, Psy.D, entitled The Power of the Will To Live, he explains that in anticipation of pivotal events, such as holidays or birthdays, people have the capacity to hold on a bit longer, if they are facing death. They are referred to as “ceremonial finish lines,” over which they want to cross before giving themselves permission to die.

Is it fear of death, self -preservation or purpose that keeps the heart beating?

Is Depression Draining the Life from You?

Depression is one of the most prevalent mood disorders and can be caused by genetic, biological, environmental, and psychological factors. Each person responds in a different manner to the occurrence.

Signs and symptoms of depression include:

• Self-described or other observed persistent sad, anxious, or “empty” mood
• Feelings of hopelessness, or pessimism … “Why bother?”
• Uncharacteristic irritability
• Feelings of guilt, worthlessness, or helplessness… “I don’t matter. ”
• Loss of interest or pleasure in hobbies and activities
• Decreased energy or fatigue
• Moving or talking more slowly; a feeling of heaviness
• Feeling restless or having trouble sitting still
• Difficulty concentrating, remembering, or making decisions
• Problems sleeping, early-morning awakening, or oversleeping
• Little desire to get out of bed
• Eating too much or restricting food
• Appetite and/or weight changes
• Thoughts of death or suicide, or suicide attempts

A therapist who has worked with clients who have either expressed suicidality or acted on the commensurate impulse to end his or her life, observed that what prevented someone from following through with the outcome that led to death, was a stated will to live. Sometimes the reason de’tre is another person, or a milestone achievement, such as a child’s graduation or wedding.Others have said that they are continuing to live for their dog or cat.

She noted that learned resilience was a key factor. When people are able to look back at life events and determine that they have survived each of them, they are better equipped to move forward. In conversation with someone in crisis, she asked what had gotten him through previous challenges. He had learned helplessness that was no longer serving him. He reported that relying on his parents was his M.O. Now that his father has died and his mother is in a nursing home, he needs to formulate a new strategy.

Another person reported that her parents had “taught me how to live without them,” so that when she feels overwhelmed, she calls on her resiliency reserves to get her through every eventuality.Even in her darkest moments when the thought that “it would be better if I wasn’t here,” that certainty that she would emerge triumphant helped her to keep on keepin’ on.

The will to live is a powerful force that can be generated and sustained in the face of love.

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The will to live - Arthur Schopenhauer.

Will to live – Arthur Schopenhauer

One of the famous critics of Hegelian philosophy was the German thinker Arthur Schopenhauer. Hegel believed that the basis of the universe is the mind. But why, then, is everything that happens in our life, as a rule, distinguished by unreasonableness? Maybe the basis of the world is not the mind, but something completely different. What? Something unreasonable, illogical, beyond the mind and understanding, unconscious, irrational, unpredictable and not comprehensible in the usual ways.

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860)

Schopenhauer called all this will and contrasted it with the mind that Hegel spoke of. The basis of the universe, according to Schopenhauer, is not reason, but will, and therefore there is a lot of unreasonable, random and inexplicable in it. What is this will, what is it? Will is a combination of desires and instincts, passions and impulses, moods and feelings, these are unconscious urges, unaccountable aspirations, actions that are not controlled by anything or anyone. Questions are alien to the will: why, why, how, for what purpose? For it there are no goals, causes, motives, consequences and any other reasonable grounds. It is enough that she is. Its existence or presence is the only undoubted truth. When weeds rush towards the sun with violent force, drowning out cultivated plants, is it guided by any reasonable necessity? Of course not. It grows thanks to the blind instinct of life embedded in it.0003

neither, or the will to live, as Schopenhauer says. When a lion in the desert devours an antelope, does he act from any conscious motive? Of course not. In this way he manifests his will to live. The same can be said about any creature on Earth.

Man is no exception to the general rule. He has a mind, and therefore it seems to us that, unlike all other creatures, he does not act because of unconscious desires and blind instincts, but because of reasonable and conscious motives. But this is an illusion, says Schopenhauer. If a person acts reasonably, then why then does he lie, be mean, betray, why is he able to kill his own kind, do various nasty things, wish evil? It is sad to admit that a person is guided in his activities not by reasonable grounds, but by a blind, unreasonable will. All his actions and deeds are manifestations of the will to live, his unconscious desire to live, his frantic and instinctive desire to exist at all costs, and to live as best as possible, even at the expense of suffering and deprivation of his own kind.

Will, therefore, is present everywhere and in everything, is the only property of the universe, the universe itself. According to Hegel, the world is reason; according to Schopenhauer, the world is will. Being unreasonable, the will draws us through life in a direction unknown to us. It seems to us that we act consciously and freely, but in fact we simply do not notice that we are hostages of our own will, which acts in addition to our mind, we are slaves, unconsciously fulfilling all its whims and whims, demands and orders. The will turns our life into an eternal struggle and tension: we are constantly striving for something, avoiding something, we are forced to do something every day and hour, to hurry somewhere, to hope for something and to be afraid of something. The will does not leave us alone for a second, filling life with aggression, fear, hatred and despair. We ourselves do not belong to ourselves, completely obeying the will, we are its thoughtless performers.

As we can see, Schopenhauer's views are sad and gloomy fatalism. What does he offer us? How does he see a way out of such a depressing situation? There is a way out, says the German philosopher, and it consists in the following. If the cause of our eternal life tension and the suffering it generates is the will, then we should consciously resist it: direct all our forces to suppress it, eradicate it, extinguish it. How to do it? Give up your own desires, diminish your needs, strive for nothing, chase after nothing. Do not indulge the will, but deny it everything, do not fulfill its requirements, but turn away from them. Only in this way is it possible to extinguish the flame of the will and bring life into a state of calm and even apathy. As we already know, the conscious renunciation of desires is called asceticism in philosophy. Recall that asceticism is one of the main features of Buddhism. Schopenhauer was well acquainted with the religious and philosophical teachings of ancient India and China, and borrowed much of them when creating his teaching. Ascetic behavior, he believed, will allow us to avoid struggle, tension and suffering, and suppress the will to live. And let asceticism not give us unconditional happiness, however, nothing better is offered to us in our imperfect and unreasonable world.

This text is an introductory fragment.

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Arthur Schopenhauer. "The World as Will and Representation"

Schopenhauer introduced the concept of will into philosophy, which greatly influenced the thinkers of the 20th century. In this part we read the work in which he described this idea.

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Author of the lesson

Victor Gorbatov

Trainer in argumentation and critical thinking, co-founder of the Free University, author of 30 scientific articles and 2 textbooks on logic

We will devote this part to Schopenhauer's main philosophical work, The World as Will and Representation (1818).

💁🏻‍♂️ Schopenhauer commented and popularized the ideas from The World as Will and Representation all his life, but contemporaries did not attach much importance to them. In that era, among the enlightened public, harmonious rational systems were much more highly valued - Leibnizianism, Kantianism, Hegelianism. It was not until the second half of the 19th century that Schopenhauer's ideas began to gain prominence: "The sunset of my life became the dawn of my glory. "

📕🤯 The first volume is a systematic exposition of the whole philosophy of Schopenhauer, consists of 4 books.

1️⃣ Epistemology, the doctrine of knowledge - tells about the "thing-in-itself" and explains that knowledge is only a reflection of the will in itself.

2️⃣ Ontology, the doctrine of being — reveals the essence of being as consisting of forces, not things, asserts that gravity and electricity as fundamental forces of “will” rule everything.

3️⃣ Aesthetics, the doctrine of the beautiful — shows the essence of art as a direct expression of the Cosmic will without the help of concepts; claims that all people are brilliant in one way or another, they are just afraid of their genius.

4️⃣ Ethics, the doctrine of morality - explains why the "categorical imperative" is a false fetish, why happiness is unattainable, and peace can be found only with the help of asceticism.

📗😍 The second volume contains short essays, developing some private themes - thoughts about death, freedom, age, state, sexuality. It is precisely these unpretentious but vivid works that won the love of the public more than the sophisticated and somewhat ponderous arguments of the first volume.