By: Iyo_Embong

“Who are you to judge the life I live? I know I’m not perfect, but I don’t live to be. But before you start pointing fingers, make sure your hands are clean.” – Bob Marley.

What should you live for? Wealth? Power? Service? Longevity? Reason? Love? Faith? Family? God? Virtue? Happiness? Fulfillment? Comfort? Contentment? Integrity? There are hundreds to choose from.

Most religions are concerned with this question. Some are more interested in the God question and our relationship with the All Mighty. But I’m interested in how we should live, because it seems to me that how we should live is still being questioned and misunderstood.

We have lots of laws, rules, codes of conduct and moral and ethical standards. We have our version of right and wrong. From Socrates, Aristotle and Plato, we have lots of dusty old books full of other people’s wisdom, who in their time tackled the same question.

Every nation on Earth has variations on how should we live, and by and by, we disagree, argue and even go to war over what should be an easy answer to an easy question. In fact the idea that we don’t know, raises questions. How come we don’t intrinsically know?

Interestingly, once some people have written down the codes of conduct and of law, the question changes to: How we get people to follow how we should live, as we have determined?

I’ve never done a survey of all the world’s laws, codes of conduct, cultures and traditions but I wonder if there are a lot of similarities. Things like our values, practices, how do we conduct ourselves in business, relationships, religious observance and the love of music and food? Are we all, very much the same, and why then are we always wanting to get the bottom of that question…”how should we live?” if we are all living very much the same?

As babies, we don’t understand anything. And as we grow, we learn the meanings of things, and we want to start putting all these meanings of things together in a way that makes our life make sense. And it doesn’t work terribly well. As much as we would like to pretend to, the fact is…lots of what we know is contradictory and many areas we still don’t understand.

How shall we live? What shall we live for, if anything? How we can decide right from wrong? Is there any reasonable way to answer these questions that doesn’t require us to fall back on blind faith?

Every religion and culture has its own answer. Some people say there’s no answer, that the answer doesn’t matter, that the answer is impossible for us to know, or that the answer is purely a matter of personal choice. The worst answer of all though is what most people do – to ignore the question entirely!

So how are we supposed to figure out how to live? Do we simply guess and hope for the best? Is there any rational, sane way to make such a hefty decision? I can’t make that decision for you. Strangely and oddly enough, maybe some of the answer lies in the movie Avatar. We need to be a seeker of truth, and our goal is not to destroy some enemy but rather to attain what is called the Codex of Ultimate Wisdom. In order to achieve this goal, we must develop our character in the eight virtues. All of these virtues derive from the eight possible combinations of truth, love, and courage as follows:

• Truth = Honesty
• Love = Compassion
• Courage = Valor
• Truth + Love = Justice
• Truth + Courage = Honor
• Love + Courage = Sacrifice
• Truth + Love + Courage = Spirituality

The absence of Truth, Love, and Courage is PRIDE, the opposite of which is HUMILITY.

What makes an act right or wrong, good or bad? Is moral “rightness” and “wrongness” built into the fabric of reality in the same way as are mathematical truths?

So the sum total of all that we know just confuses us, leaving us to ask yet again, “How we should live?”

When we make our judgement or observation about others on the way they live, that judgement or observation can only come from our experience or what we know. Therefore, the more experience and knowledge we gain the better we become at correctly discerning the situation. I believe, the most corrupt thing to do in this world would be to judge someone. Don’t judge others – Try to imagine what it’s like to be them!

By: Iyo_Embong 2012©Copyright. Any distribution, reproduction or copying of any part of this article is forbidden. If you wish to use this article please only use the first 2-3 lines as an excerpt and link back directly to the article along with the Authors name.