MLC - I sleep upstairs, in my son's room, next to the central master bedroom.
I don't understand your question: "What message did you get from your childhood or marriage that suggested your worth was based only on meeting other's needs? "
Why be alive? A couple of reasons, these being a mix of (lousy reason) selfishly wanting to enjoy the world, then more nobly - but not enough is happening - of doing something good for the world (and this may not include people directly, as in being a teacher or a doctor or caring for people's spirit, but could be something in nature or art or science instead). At the bottom though, I am not worth more than any other person - .
I never did find a good answer for why I should be allowed to live, which is frustrating.
Frankl talks about boredom, here:
"Unlike an animal, man is no longer told by drives and instincts what he must do. And in contrast to man in former times, he is no longer told by traditions and values what he should do. Now, knowing neither what he must do nor what he should do, he sometimes does not even know what he basically wishes to do. Instead, he wishes to do what other people do... or he does what other people wish him to do...
In this situation when people "loose ground" the old liberal social philosophies also fail. The bitter truth, says Frankl (UCM, p. 21), is that (italics by Frankl)
For too long we have been dreaming a dream from which we are now waking up: the dream that if we just improve the socioeconomic situation of people, everything will be okay, people will become happy. The truth is that as the struggle for survival has subsided, the question has emerged: survival for what? Ever more people today have the means to live, but no meaning to live for.
In another book (PAE, p.122) Frankl notes:
What threatens contemporary man is the alleged meaningfulness of his life, or, as I call it, the existential vacuum within him. And when does this vacuum open up, when does this so often latent vacuum become manifest? In the state of boredom.
Boredom is the main symptom of this illness. To see if society is sick one has just to observe how deeply boredom – in its many forms and manifestations – overflows peoplesí lives. Sometimes it becomes unbearable, and then its companions: addiction, depression and aggression, become the threat not only to the individual but also to society as a whole."
Anyway, that is a long way of saying that bored hedonism is not a good way to live, that I sometimes recognize it in myself, and that I'd like to change it, especially for the kids' sakes.
Luke
M58, xW54 S22, D18 M 1984, D 2016 Living a new life.
