A older friend tells me proudly that he drank a six pack for breakfast. He's living in the now, he says. And he does seem happier than usual, though in my experience of him that's not a high bar. He advised me that worrying about longevity is a mistake. I disagree, but I can see from his perspective health advice is a case of true but wrong. But it's also a case of the questions you ask determine the answers you get.
His choice reminded me of Li Bo (I see it's now Li Bai, according to Wikipedia, the arbiter of truth) the great Tang poet who extolled the virtues of drunkenness. Wine was for him the entrance to the mystical vast room of nature, even of the universe itself and key to its secret essence. The poet who, legend says, drowned while reaching to grasp the moon's reflection in the water. The great Li Bo who reached the boundaries of life and mind as no one else more.
My friend is also the parent of a single child who's finished his premed undergrad work at Duke, now living with his girlfriend back in North Carolina. My friend is an empty-nester. He has no ambitions that I know of, no goals, now that his son has set himself up for his future.
He seemed to me to be an ideal dad. He home schooled his son for several years, and whenever I saw him, he was with his son playing ball or hanging out together. He seemed much happier then.
I wonder about this "living in the now" as a prescription of how to live best. Is it a means to perceive the world aright without our distractions of plans and worries? An escape from predictive mind, that focus on survival and avoidance of surprise? Or a wellness prescription to free oneself of stress and lower one's blood pressure and protect the kidneys? Or is it a kind of hedonism of the moment? We all must die, so enjoy the moment. That's not a health prescription, unless it's "don't worry yourself and you will be healthier to appreciate the now until you die". How is this living in the now not a bit suicidal?
If you push that nihilism all the way, then there's no point in our narrow predictive mind worries but also no point in shedding them. What great value is there in experiencing nature as it really is outside our self-preservation drives? It all seems misguided and empty-headed. After all, all our emotions -- including joy and engagement -- are given to us by natural selection as useful to our survival. Why pervert them to impractical uselessness? Why not employ them to their rightful purpose, survival? Is there no joy in defeating the grim reaper another day?
But most striking to me is the implication that there's no purpose in such a life-in-the-now. Ever since I was little -- five or six -- I've had a great ambition. I wanted to understand the world and ideas. Over time, that became understanding the systems of the world -- society, economies, language, the mind -- and the history of ideas, of philosophies. And now I am moved by honor: I desperately want to collect what I have learnt over my experience and give an account of myself. To me, that's the purpose of being here. Humans alone in this universe, so far as we know, can understand and symbolize the universe itself. If you are not contributing to that knowledge and sharing it, I say you're underachieving.
And it's for that reason I worry about longevity. Will I have the time to complete my task of writing this blog? I'm happy to sacrifice "living in the now" for the work that I have. I'm really not interested in the now. I'm focused on my goal. The meaning of life is engaging so deeply with something outside oneself so that you forget life and yourself entirely.
If I had no ambition, maybe I'd want to "live in the now". But I don't want to be without ambition. Life doesn't end with death. Your account of yourself remains. You have work to do.
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