I sat tonight watching Planet Earth 2. What a spectacular start to an incredible series. I thoroughly enjoyed the first series all those years ago and now have my Sunday nights planned out for the next few weeks! Bravo BBC.
What struck me most in this week’s episode was how simple other animals lives are. They seem to centre around a few things – food, shelter, reproduction. In other words, survival. Evolution is strong at play in the animal world. One scene tonight showed how newly hatched lizards on a remote island have to dash through a corridor of snakes to reach their fellow adult lizards! Some make it, some don’t. Those who make it have shown either strength or a display of intuition that the others didn’t have. Even though the ‘losers’ in this case may suffer a rather painful death, their being born has not been a wasted effort. They provide food to the species who hunted them, nourishment to the ground upon which their bodies decompose. Some even die to protect others. Morbid, but factual.
I sat watching all this with one of my closest friends, someone whom I often put the world to rights with. A while back in one of our many deep conversations he put forward the idea that in the developed world, we complicate our lives so much because we no longer have to worry about survival. Medical advances, peacetime, technology, etc. means basic survival is no longer at the top of the list. That box is ticked, so we busy ourselves with other stuff, and that’s when it starts to go a bit wrong.
Tonight we evolved that idea. We thought that if all animals experience survival of their species as being their primary instinct (or purpose), why would us humans be any different? And what happens if you remove that primary purpose as is the case in western culture? Here I’m talking about the very basics of survival, between life and death.
So many people I speak to say they are “not feeling satisfied” in life or suggest they have “no sense of purpose”. Surely if our primary purpose in life has been taken care of, but we weren’t even aware on a conscious level of that being the case, then we simply go in search of (another) purpose. Not realising of course that this ‘search for purpose’ is in fact a search for a secondary purpose!
You may need to read that paragraph a few times…
The survival instinct is strong in the animal world. As I watched on TV tonight, Penguins will throw themselves off cliffs into raging oceans to simply find food for their offspring. Elephants will trek thousands of miles to find water. Survival in the animal world is a BIG deal. It really is their sole life purpose and they face grave threats to it every day.
…when people go in search of their purpose in life, are they really searching in vain? Could anything ever be equal to the purpose of surviving? Can anything really fill that void?
On the basis that we are animals too, would it be going too far to suggest that if we don’t live in an environment where survival is tough (and by tough I mean an environment akin to the aforementioned penguins), a huge void is left? And when people go in search of their purpose in life, are they really searching in vain? Could anything ever be equal to the purpose of surviving? Can anything really fill that void?
It is no surprise to me that when you consider all this, and read about people who have come close to death, or grown up in an environment where their existence truly was regularly threatened, that they are often disinterested in material things and often go about simplifying their lives.
A key part of this discussion is an animal’s purpose being not only survival of self, but also of their species. You don’t have to look far in the animal world to see that they look after each other. They have often sophisticated ways of protecting each other from external threat. They understand that simply looking after their own survival is not enough to protect the survival of their communities, of their species.
People in the western world climb career ladders, build big houses, acquire assets, all in the hope that one day, their efforts will be rewarded and happiness will flow. Yet is it not true that the happiest people you know are those with a clear sense of purpose? Is it not the case that they have simple lives? And that people are almost always most happy when they are in a good place themselves and are able to help others?
We cannot change the fact we live in a world where our primary purpose of survival is all but taken care of. To suggest that in order to find purpose you should put yourself under threat so you can experience the rawness of a survival instinct would be crazy, and would actually go against our purpose to survive. But as I’ve mentioned, the powerful survival instinct is in two parts – survival of self and survival of species. So if you get on board with the idea that this survival instinct, like animals, is our primary purpose, it makes sense that with our own survival taken care of, we can still find a strong sense of purpose by helping others.
My depression stripped me bare. It took me back to basics, it reminded me what it was to survive.
I’ve talked before about how I believe depression can be an agent for healing. I stand by this even more tonight. My depression stripped me bare. It took me back to basics, it reminded me what it was to survive. Since then, I have made significant changes in my life. I’ve simplified things. Furthermore, my experience on Ayahuasca in South America offered me so many lessons. One of which was very, very clear – your purpose in life is to care for yourself and others. If you do this, you will find inner peace. Pretty much everything else is just noise. Sounds like a rewarding purpose if you ask me.
Picture shows Penguins courting at sunset, Zavodovksi island, South Sandwich islands, Antarctica. Zavodovski hosts the world’s biggest penguin colony – more than 1.5 million breeding adults. – (C) BBC – Photographer. Source: https://metrouk2.files.wordpress.com