Stories about Life
1

The first paradigm I have about life is that you need to know what your duty in life is and then you need to do it. This depends upon having a state in life—i.e., a role to play. So whether you are a teacher, a member of a family, a soldier, or manager or whatever the case may be there are going to be expectations and your duty is to fulfill those expectations. I constructed this paradigm after growing up without really too many rules or much of a sense of place. It was only once I finally began to settle down and make a decision about where I wanted to be in life that everything came into focus. I could see what was required of me and what to work towards. This gives a person a sense of peace and mission. It takes away the doubt and worry about what will be. When you are doing your duty in life, everything else disappears because you are doing what is important and what you need to be doing.

The second paradigm I have about life is that your life is not your own. It does not belong to you. I myself used to live selfishly because I thought you only live once so you might as well live it up and live it to the fullest. But nothing I did ever made me feel full, like I was getting the maximum amount out of life. What I realized was that I was trying to live for me, to make myself happy—but there is nothing I can do to make myself happy because I did not make myself or the world. There is one greater than me who made everything, and that is the source of happiness. So how does one get to that source? By following the rules—the commandments that were given and that one can find in the Christian religion. Basically, to live for others and to love God and love one’s neighbor without rest is the rule here. This is the essence of the Golden Rule. This is what brings me more happiness and peace than anything I have ever known. I never would have arrived at the conclusion by myself. I got there thanks to my family who helped me to see what it was I was missing in life.

These assumptions about how to live were arrived at simply by living my life and trying to figure out what was best for me. I got to a point where I could not figure out...…interpret it incorrectly.

4

An alternative to my story would be that I did not embrace the idea of doing my duty in life or living by the Golden Rule but instead adopted an Ethical Egoism, in which I lived entirely for myself and believed that the ends justified the means. This is the type of “rule” that many people have lived by, including the Enron leaders who caused that company to collapse because they were justifying their own fraudulent activities on the basis that it was making them and their friends rich, even though it was deceiving investors and regulators. I could have easily gone down this road, but what held me back was the clear indication that it might not end well.

I think that if I had decided to live life without these rules I would probably be very unhappy and unsatisfied in life. These rules are what have helped me obtain a sense of place and peace and harmony. I feel like I am using my talents for something good and I like that. I think that if I were pursuing some self-interest without having a sense of duty, I would be very miserable. I would still be questioning my place in the world and wondering what I was supposed to be doing.