Why Bother?

"At the end of every hard earned day people find some reason to believe."

We are the fruit from the flower from the tree. We start underripe, become ripe, soften, wrinkle then rot and smell. We have a shelf-life – a sweet one. I hereby take you on a journey inside of yourself to look at the meaning of life question.

Well before wet dreams and before I had any need to wet my face to shave, I was taken aback by a thing people were saying, namely, life is pointless, life has no meaning. How could this be? We are encouraged to study hard at school, build a life, build businesses, or get a good job and enjoy life. Around us I see people’s excitement; I see their hopes and aspirations. There is so much to do, so much to look forward to. We hope to change the world for the better. We can make something of ourselves. We have a lifetime of opportunities ahead. How can you possibly say that life is pointless. I agree, life can’t be pointless. Can it? I know we all die in the end. We may die at a much younger age than we may have liked, but still, there life is full of possibilities. Great possibilities.

Whatever you feel and think right now, whether you think life is full of meaning and purpose, whether you believe that life is a test, whether you have found your individual aim or not, I will say to you one thing, we are without a doubt driven to do things. You want to do things. Why? Because you have certain drives built into you. These drives are deep rooted inside all of us. These drives are in everyone, including your next-door neighbour, and the famous people and the rich people and the poor people and you, whoever you are.

Most people don’t bother to think much beyond what they need to get done today. We are driven, distracted, and occupied. Some are so preoccupied that they rarely consider anything more than what needs to be done to pay the bills and save for the next holiday. Washing to hang out and other drudgery that can be left until tomorrow. Today is another fine day, another day older, another day wiser. Today we can party. Maybe we even get to do something that we have been waiting a long time for.

No matter how dreary our daily routines are, or how exciting life can be, I wanted to get to the heart of the wretched question, what is the meaning of life? There must be an answer to this. Perhaps there is something that makes us think that there is a meaning to life. I have asked many people what they think. I have read books, watched films, and looked at what is available on the subject. Each answer that I came across though seems to be what I would call fudged, hazy, never complete, or consistent. There has to be something better than what I have been shown so far.

Why do we bother? It is obvious that we may want to survive. We may want to travel, have fun, and explore. We may want to make more money and have a better life. There can be a strong desire to have children. We may wish to master things. We endeavour to learn and succeed. We can strive for power. We may aim to keep ourselves healthy and happy. We can hope for better. Some wise ones simply plod on with no thought as to why. Others spend an age pondering what it is all for.

Whatever we seek, it all comes down to three words. Three drives. Three things in each of us. Every one of us. These three things provide us the impetus to get up and do. These three things are at the heart of all our motives. We use these three drives all day, every day. When you fully understand them, you will see your life in an entirely different way.

I will go through these drives one by one, giving you everyday examples to help you get to grips with what I am saying. Nothing too taxing as such, but you need to spend a while thinking about them. To really appreciate the importance of this you must watch them in action in your own head. This is a revolutionary way of looking at humans and their desires. Using the tree analogy, we can look at any leaf and follow a path down to the trunk via the twigs and branches. I use this ubiquitous tree example for it has branches and smaller twigs that fan out in all directions. Sex branches out in untold directions. The same sex drive produces untold sexual practices. You are driven by sex like the next person but what you get up to during sex differs substantially. It is the same fundamental striving to explore sex but with huge variation. Sex itself is underpinned by more basic drives. Things that make it satisfying and will us to explore it.

Those with a lower sex drive will have some other activity that stands in place of it. For what you get from sexual liaisons someone else may get equal pleasure from eating a bar of chocolate. Chocolate may indeed be better than sex for some. It hits the same spots. It satisfies the same core drives.

These drives rarely work in isolation, they are intertwined with each other. When you appreciate the effect of these drives you begin to see them at work in every aspect of our lives. You begin to understand why you did what you did and maybe why you reacted in a certain way at certain times. You will understand your mistakes and see why you succeeded. Everything changes when you understand the drives. Things begin to make sense.

Our drives are a vital component of us. They act as a layer, a special layer that sits between our biology and psychology. When you appreciate the workings of this layer, you can see how it influences all aspects of our psychology. These drives act on us from birth until death. We are born, as you well know. We develop. We grow, we learn and survive. One way or another we end at the end regardless of what we do in between. Some achieve more than others, but they die too. Some of us search for meaning. Ironically, this search stems from these drives.

This understanding of these drives will be fruitful to all. You may have half-known about them already. Now you have a chance to get to understand them fully. They say knowledge is power. It is and sometimes more than that. I am sure many of you will have said to yourself, “If only I had known that when I was younger”. There are things we find out and things we never find out. We die not knowing. This doesn’t matter. Not at all - in the grand scheme of things. Luck, chance, and fortune can alter what we discover. We can gain awareness. I am not talking about anything deep or complex necessarily. It can be simple things, ordinary things.

Knowing certain things enables us to do, to try, to explore in different places. Had we known about these things before, then our life would be very different. I didn’t realise she fancied me. I didn’t know they were looking for someone for that job. I didn’t realise that place existed. I didn’t know that could be done. Lots of things that we are aware of or not. It only matters if you find out later. It can be galling if you find out too late.

Let’s begin. Let’s look at those drives. Let’s see them in action. Let’s see the affect they have on our day to day lives.

Why, what, who, when, where, can, and how. All these have something in common. They are questioning. We are asking. We want to find out. We want to discover. What is that? Who made this? When is dinner? Can this be used for ...? How do I get there? Endless questions. When we wake up, many of us will ask ourselves what day it is and look at a clock to see what time it is. We read the news to find out what is happening. We want to know if we have any messages. When we notice something move, we want to work out what it is. We notice changes and want to know why something has changed. Who changed it? When was it changed? What is touching me? What is making that noise? Who sung that song? What time does the shop close? What is for lunch?

Curiosity may have killed the cat, but curiosity is life. No curiosity - no will to live. What is the best way to spoil someone’s enjoyment of a film? Tell them how it ends. Take away their suspense. We are glued to the screen and watch as we have the desire to know what happens. We are inclined to throw a book away, part way through when we no longer care how the story evolves. We all are well aware of what curiosity is, however, few realise that it is entrenched in everything we do. We use curiosity to discover new places. We use it in science to solve huge problems. We use it to explore. We use it though for menial everyday tasks too. Curiosity is far wider than we imagine. It is not solely for large scale investigations. Some describe people as being curious. We are all curious. We are just curious about different things.

Is the water in the kettle boiled yet? Why did that bridge collapse? These are rather different curiosities, but they use the same curiosity mechanism. The only difference between wondering about the water boiling or the bridge collapsing is the number of neurons involved in your head. Some curiosities will call on hundreds of times as many neurons as others. It only matters how important it is to you, how much you personally care. Aunt Mable is having an affair. At her age? Some want to know who with and what was behind it. Those that call this kind of thing mindless gossip will show less curiosity. Many of us have a wish to know what is happening between people. This wish is comparable in importance to you as another’s desire to investigate why people are mysteriously falling ill. One person’s desire to solve a problem in science is matched by someone else’s desire to solve a crossword puzzle. A gap in our knowledge is a gap in our knowledge. Ultimately neurons get rearranged and new links formed. How that impacts the world seems to be more significant, but we care about our own neurons the most. Our neurons, our actions, our bubble, our world in our head that is powered by curiosity. I must keep pointing out that this curiosity mechanism is at work all day, every day. These two questions; where did I put my pen? and where is the enemy lurking? use the same curiosity process.

Mysteries play into the hands of our innate curiosity. Where did that person vanish to? Were they killed or could they be still alive somewhere? What happened and who was responsible? We search and search for answers and may not let it go until we solve the mystery. Looking for lost treasure is another example. Looking for a sunken ship or hoard of silverware. Some have set up treasure hunts. They chose a place to bury a golden object then published some vague clues to indicate its whereabouts. This has sent people crazy. So crazy that they offered to pay ten times its value to be told where it is.

Look how we fret when we are dumped. We want an explanation. We consider all the possibilities. Was it something we said, how we behaved or something about us that led to that fateful decision? Do we need to change? What was the real reason for the upset? What are they not telling us? We want to know as our mind will not rest. We seek closure. We want to find out who did something, who stole something or who was really responsible for an accident. We crave setting the record straight in our heads. Our curiosity drives this. Once the record has been set straight and we get to the truth, we are no longer plagued by the curiosity. During a large investigation we use curiosity to summon clues. We speculate how each clue can impact the investigation. We consider what clues there may be using curiosity to solve the bigger curiosity. We are curious to know what clues will help and what we can find to rule things out. Curiosity can bug us intently and relentlessly. Have you ever looked in every draw and cupboard for something? Hours wasted. You sit down and another potential place of where it could be pops into your mind.

Curiosity can be a huge factor in the inspiration to travel, especially to new places. Once the decision is made to go, we need to know what time we must arrive at the airport. Wanting to know that departure time might not seem like it is a curiosity thing, but I say it is. As is the thinking about whether the flight will be busy and will it be on time. Will it be a smooth flight or turbulent? How am I going to get to the hotel? Who will I meet? Even if it is a destination we have been to before we brood over whether they still serve the same food as last time? That fruit looks ‘new’, I haven’t seen anything quite like that before, I wonder what it tastes like? How does the texture compare to other similar fruits? On it goes. What is this stuck on my seat? There will be a small number of large curiosities and thousands of much smaller ones, micro curiosities. What concerts, what events what new and exciting things are there to see. Which button do I press to get the lift door to shut?

I have presented a random selection of different things we may or may not be interested in. All are driven by our curiosity. Was my writing worth the effort? Were all those keystrokes in vain? If you can stop right now and think about what you are to do for the rest of the day, how many curiosities can you come up with? Why do you want a career change, why do you want a new partner, why do you do what you do? A vast proportion of every action, everything you do has a basis in curiosity. There is of course more to it than that. There are two other drives that come into play also.

One thing is quite apparent; we do not all care about the same things. There are things you care about a lot, which other people do not care much about at all. You care far more about this; they care far more about that. We each have the same curiosity mechanism, but it is directed in different ways. Some may wonder who won the football match, what was the score, who scored and how the team managed to pull it off. Others have absolutely no interest in who scored, who won or whether the football matched was even played or not. We are curious about other things instead. Curiosity is fundamental to who we are. Lose your curiosity and you lose the will to live. If you no longer care what is going to happen in the future, your future, the future of your children, the future of your favourite football team or what progress man will make then you shrivel up.

We think of life as being deep and meaningful. We search for the reasons for our existence. We look for something extraordinary and never realise how simple we are. We are nothing other than a body with a head atop that has a vast conglomeration of links with gaps in them. These gaps produce curiosity. We have a gap in our knowledge and we want to fill it. That goes for academic items, simple facts, or methods of doing something. We may wish to know how something works or how we could make it work better. Rearranging links and sorting out the gaps. Each day we refine the links and fill more and more gaps. Some gaps appear fleetingly whilst others form a huge hole with countless links surrounding it. When you think, you run along lines of thought and encounter a gap. That stops us in our tracks sometimes. That spoils the ride. When we fill the gap, it feels good. A bit like repairing a pothole in the road.