Lin Yutang: Life is just like this, you must know how to enjoy life

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The enjoyment of life includes many things: our own enjoyment, the enjoyment of family life, the enjoyment of trees, flowers, clouds, curving rivers, waterfalls and nature in all its forms, in addition to poetry, art, contemplation, friendship, conversation, reading, the enjoyment of the latter are different manifestations of spiritual communication.

Some pleasures are obvious, such as the enjoyment of food, the joyous social gathering or family reunion, the wild excursion on a sunny spring day; some hedonism is less obvious, such as the enjoyment of poetry, art, and contemplation.

I don't think it is possible to divide these two categories of enjoyment into material and spiritual, firstly because I do not believe in this distinction and secondly because I am always ignorant of this classification.

When I see a group of men, women and children having a joyful picnic, how can I say which part of their joy is material and which part is spiritual? I saw one child jumping on the grass, another making up a small wreath with daisies, their mother holding a piece of meatloaf in her hand, my uncle biting a juicy red apple, my father lying on his back looking out at the clouds in the sky, and my grandfather holding a pipe in his mouth. Maybe someone was turning on the phonograph, and in the distance came the sound of music and the roar of the waves.

Which of these joys is material and which is spiritual? Can the differences between enjoying a piece of meat bread and enjoying the surrounding scenery (the latter is what we call poetry) easily separate? The enjoyment of music, which we call art, the smoking bucket, which we call material enjoyment: but can we say that the former is a more noble joy than the latter? So, it seems to me that this material and spiritual joy is chaotic, inexplicable, and unreal. I suspect that this classification is based on a false philosophical theory that makes a strict distinction between spirit and flesh, and that no deeper or more direct study of our true joy has been done.

Am I going too far in my assumptions to argue for the undecided question of the legitimate purpose of life? I have always believed that the purpose of life is the true enjoyment of life. I was a little hesitant to use the term "purpose." The purpose of the true enjoyment of this life in life is probably not a deliberate purpose, but a natural attitude towards life. The term "purpose" implies the meaning of intention and effort. The problem encountered in life is not what he should do and how to achieve this goal, but how to use this life and use the fifty or sixty years of talent given to him. He should adjust his life so that he can attain the greatest pleasure in life, and this answer is as practical as the answer to how to spend the weekend, and the question of not being superficial, such as what mysterious purpose life has in the plan of the universe, can only be abstract and vague.

On the contrary, I think that philosophers, in trying to solve the question of the purpose of life, assume that there must be a purpose in life. The reason why Western thinkers regard this issue as so important is undoubtedly due to the influence of theology. I think we're assuming too much about the planning and purpose aspect. Attempts to answer this question, to argue about it, to confuse it, justify the futile and unnecessary work. If there is a purpose or plan in life, it should not be so confusing, so vague, so difficult to discover.

This question can be divided into two questions: the first is about the purpose of the gods, the purpose that God has determined for mankind; the second is about the purpose of mankind, which is the purpose determined by man himself. On the first question, I do not want to discuss it, because we think that what God thinks is in fact the thought of our own mind; that is, the thought that we imagine will exist in God's mind, but it is indeed very difficult to guess the intelligence of the gods with human intelligence. The result of our speculations often makes God the cobia defending the banner of our army, and makes him as patriotic as we are; we think that God has absolutely no "divine purpose" or "definite number" for the world or Europe, and only "divine purpose" or "definite number" for our homeland. I believe that the God in the minds of the German Nazis must also have the armband of the B word. This God will always be on our side, not on their side. But the peoples of the world who hold this view are not only Germanic.

As for the second question, the point of contention is not what the purpose of life is, but what the purpose of life should be; so it is a practical and not metaphysical question, and everyone can have his own concepts and standards of value for the question of "what the purpose of life should be". That's why we argue about this, because we have different values from each other. In my own opinion, my ideas are more practical and less abstract. I thought life doesn't necessarily have purpose or meaning. Whitman said: "I do this alone, enough is enough. "I'm alive now — and perhaps for decades more — that human life exists, and that's enough. From this point of view, the question becomes very simple, and there is only one answer. What is the purpose of life besides enjoying life?

This question of happiness is a great question to which all non-religious philosophers pay attention, but christian thinkers ignore it at all, which is a strange thing. The great problem that worries the theologians is not the happiness of mankind, but the "salvation" of mankind— "salvation" is indeed a tragic term.

This term sounds harsh to me, because I hear people talking about "saving the country" every day in China. Everyone wants to "save" China. This kind of speech makes people feel like they are on a ship that is about to sink, a feeling that everything is at a loss, and everyone is thinking about the best way to live a whole life. Christianity– which some call "the last sigh of the two worlds that have fallen (Greece and Rome)" – still retains this quality today because it is still worried about the question of salvation, and people are worried about the problem of salvation from this earth, and as a result the problem of life is forgotten.

If human beings do not feel that they are on the verge of extinction, why should they worry so much about the question of salvation? Theologians are so concerned with the question of salvation, so they are so devoid of the question of happiness that they can only tell us about the future that there is a vague heaven; when we ask, what are we going to do over there, how are we going to be happy in heaven, they can only give us very vague ideas, such as singing, wearing white clothes, and so on. Muhammad at least painted for us a picture of future happiness with wine, juicy fruit, and a dark-haired, big-eyed, amorous maiden, which is what we laymen can understand. If theologians don't make the vision of heaven more vivid and more intimate, then we really don't want to sacrifice this earthly life and go to heaven.

Someone said, "An egg today is better than a chicken tomorrow." "At least when we're planning how to spend our summer vacations, we also have to spend some time exploring where we're going. If the travel agent answered this question very vaguely, I wouldn't want to go; I had the holidays in my original place. Are we going to struggle in heaven? Do you want to work hard? (I dare say that those who believe in progress and hard work must strive unceasingly and work hard) But when we are perfect, how can we work hard and how can we make progress? Or can we live in heaven idle, idle, carefree? If this is the case, wouldn't it be better for us to learn to live a life of idleness in this earthly world than to prepare for an eternal life in the future?

If we must have a cosmology, let us forget ourselves and not limit our cosmology to the confines of human life. Let us broaden our cosmology a little to include the purpose of the whole world—the stones, the trees, and the animals. There is a plan in the universe (the word "plan," like "purpose," is a term that I don't like)—I mean, there is a model between the universes; we can first have an idea of the whole universe—though this idea is not the last to be fixed—and then take our place in the universe. This idea of nature, of our place in nature, must be natural, because we were born as an important part of nature and return to nature after death. Astronomy, geology, biology, and history all give us many good materials that enable us to produce a fairly good idea (if we do not make hasty extrapolations). It does not matter if the position occupied by man is slightly diminished in the broader conception of the purpose of the universe. He occupies a position, and that is enough, as long as he is in harmony with the natural environment around him, he can create a practical and reasonable conception of life itself.

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