What Constitutes a Wasted Life?

V-Tog wrote: Do you believe that one's life can be wasted? What would constitute a wasted life?

i wasted enough of mine to say yes, life absolutely can be wasted.
the biggest culprits i have had to deal with have been frivolousness, lack of direction, lack of commitment, and lack of discipline. i suppose i could count certain things as lack of courage also, but having direction and discipline would have served just as well.

one of the worst things in the world i could imagine doing to a young person would be to convince them that everything is equal and it doesnt really matter what he or she does with his or her time and energy.

not everyone has a passion or a dream;
not everyone is good at something, having natural talent or potential for excellence in some area;
not everyone can be trusted to make decisions or to carry responsibility;
not everyone can think under pressure (or at all lol);
not everyone is cut out be a husband or wife, or a mother or father, and to provide for and/or take care of a family;
but most of us do have at least one of those attributes or aspirations. and if you do have at least one of them, but youre just fritting around passing the days along, drifting from one blur to the next rather than pursuing or developing your potential, then youre probably wasting your life away right now and will eventually regret it immensely if something doesnt change.

i dont think its a good idea to encourage people to normalize mediocrity or to accept excuses for lack of commitment and goals. ive paid the price for not having goals and i can tell you without a doubt that platitudes,though more comfortable, are far more destructive to you than a kick in the ass if the kick convinces you that its important to apply yourself, take responsibility for your life and work for some long term objectives.

convincing yourself that its all relative and that nothing really matters will ease your anxiety and protect your fragile ego from your innate fear of failure, but the kick in the ass might protect you from the ACTUAL FAILURE - the real life humiliating failure- of hitting forty and realizing that youre BARELY more grown or competent or accomplished at 40 than you were at 20.

im not that far down the rabbit hole, but im close enough to see the danger and report that its real

V-Tog wrote: Do we have the right to deem someone else's personal time or life wasted?

often we have sort of plateau times where there is growth and learning going on but its under the surface. it looks like stagnation even to the person going through it, but there are unconscious connections being made and lessons being learned that, when they ripen, push us into the next level of maturity and competence. its hard to tell the difference between plateau and actual stagnation even in our own lives sometimes, much less to call it out for someone else.

"am i wasting my own life?" is a hard enough question to deal with lol

Interesting, So then you believe there is a right way to live, the opposite being a waste. To live life properly so as to gain something from existance? What is it that there is to gain from life in your eyes?

Seeing that we are here to learn i dont see how you can waste your life , what if your lesson is to die of an addiction , for a normal person a heroin addict is wasting his life , but in the big scheme of things , is his life still wasted or just a lesson?

We know so little of why we are here or what we are supposed to do that i cannot ever begin to think that i have any right whatsoever to call anyones life , a wasted life. So i cannot answer the question because i am not qualified to do so.

I wonder if you can determine if something is a waste unless you know what its purpose is.

There are no wasted lives; every life has a purpose, and everyone returns to the Force when that purpose has been fulfilled.

This physical life is but a blink in the eye of eternity and it's only purpose is to teach us what we cannot learn on the other side.

This is just my opinion but I think what constitutes a wasted life is a life in pursuit of everything that's not only worthless but everything that holds you back from your spiritual path.

Obviously the question is relative. It depends on who you're asking. The answers we give will always betray what we ourselves values. If the person wasting their life doesn't value the same things our first reaction is to think that they, though perhaps indirectly, are wrong. If the question is being asked universally then there should be a universal truth that applies. For some that universal truth may be happiness. For me, I think happiness is a by-product of following your own path. But a lot of people follow their own path and are miserable. Why? Do they understand themselves to know what their path should be? If they're still maturing then the path itself is changing, winding, looping into infinity...

There are a lot of lives that are lost in the streets. Life, for them, isn't precious, isn't valuable. Therefore they waste the lives of others seeking something more valuable than life; whether it is money or respect or fear. And for some, it seems all they really learn is how to steal, how to kill, and how to destroy in new and more efficient ways. They literally waste days, months, years of their lives chasing after life itself; chasing after a version of life that is filled with fear of someone else doing to them what they have done and been willing to do to others. And for some it isn't until they are forced to live in a prison that they learn the value of freedom and of just being able to live period.

I think anyone who doesn't value life is easily able to waste it.

"What constitutes a Wasted Life ?", I'm tempted tonight to say rather blithely : "trying very hard not to waste one's Life."

I have a deep an unwavering respect for blitheness

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wntX-a3jSY

There are no wasted lives; every life has a purpose, and everyone returns to the Force when that purpose has been fulfilled.

This physical life is but a blink in the eye of eternity and it's only purpose is to teach us what we cannot learn on the other side.

Well, that's one possibility. Another is that there is no point, and regardless of what you do or do not do, all things will be as if you never were.

Percy wrote: I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:

And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

That is of course, a rather distressing way to get through life (or blissful, depending on how you look at it)




Edit: This is all very philosophical, but we still make staff fill out time sheets - You're welcome to do as you wish with your life, but when it comes to company time we're quite clear on what constitutes a waste :laugh:

"Time you enjoy wasting, is not wasted time" (attributed to all sorts of people but seems to have originally been coined by Marthe Troly-Curtin).

To not enjoy things, to not balance the dukkha of existence with joy, to not be present - that is when it feels like I'm wasting time. Being present is my responsibility alone - it really shouldn't be the slightest bit affected by the situation, the people or the activity in question. Easier said than done though

What do we see when we look at everyone else around us? Other lives... "examples" of things, and the tendency of subjective comparison. This is the first thing I believe opens the opportunity to ever feel one's life would be wasted.

"They have the big business, the money, and they make a big difference, what about you? hm??"

Something that I loved when I was younger, was writing fiction stories of fantastical places. I loved them so much because I was young enough that I was not aware nor even cared if everything I was writing consisted of ideas that were already taken by other big writers. All I had my eyes on was what I was doing in my personal world and it felt satisfying, creative, and sometimes even epic. It was my thing, my baby, and I owned it proudly.

But years after, I got exposed to a massive stream of creative works all of which made mine look very trivial, worth almost nothing, and were taking ideas that I would have loved to have. I felt that any chance I would ever have to be impressive, original, or creative was gone... I became discouraged from ever bothering with it again because all these other people out there were just so much better than I would ever be, coming out with all the best ideas before I feel I ever would have.

Yet, I think that is wasted opportunity because of this.

If I had not put so much focus on what others out there are doing in terms of comparing them to me, I might have stayed inspired. I would have felt worth something and as long as I felt worth something to me, I would have the motivation to do things with my ideas.

I feel this tendency happens with people in the overall general scene of their life, about "who they are" in comparison with "who others are". In comparison with those we feel are "so much more successful" we are prone to feel our life is being wasted because we're not out there doing what they are doing.

So, I would say, personal comparison that leads into personal discouragement is what creates the notion in our own perception, of having a wasted life.

V-Tog wrote: Do we have the right to deem someone else's personal time or life wasted?

We have the right to make all kind of crazy assumptions. We do that every day. It doesn't mean we would be right, though.

V-Tog wrote: Do you believe that one's life can be wasted? What would constitute a wasted life?

Yes, life can be wasted. However, the definition for this is personal, as only the one living life is privy to whether his life is leading to where he or she wants it to go. And, oftentimes, he or she will making assumptions as well.