I think in some respects it is useful to view the purpose of life as making yourself beautiful and interesting inside. You are a complex flow of life energy, and it has a vibration, an identity, a uniqueness. It is a painting, a play, a dance, a piece of music. You are your own on-going silent poetry reading. You are colors and patterns and feeling tones and musical notes. You are all forms of art at once. Physical, expressed art comes from this latent potential, which is why you can infer much about people by looking or listening to how they express themselves, how they manifest what is within them.
Our task is to “sculpt” or paint, or play with this energy in creative, fun, useful and competent ways. And it is to paint on a progressively larger and larger canvas, to grow in our abilities.
To take a counter-intuitive example, we need the capacity for cruelty, but the wisdom and compassion not to express it unless absolutely needed for some larger, truly good, purpose. This is more or less what I understand Jordan Peterson to be arguing.
Part of learning how to “do” or dance Life, is developing competence across many emotional and work domains. This is growth. This is an increase in the number of places we can go to behaviorally and affectively and feel some control, and some sense of familiarity.
Your work of art is what you present to God when you die. It is the only possible gift which could matter, and the true enjoyment is looking in a perfect mirror.
This is what I believe. I wonder about my life and what I’m doing with it. I could have done this or that. I could have been good at anything. I’m smart and not afraid of work.
But this work of art: that is what I chose. I just realized it. Everything in my life is organized around creating the time and space to do what I do. Nothing else really matters all that much. I do wish sometimes I had closer friends, but really where would I meet people who operate the way I do? Who spend all day every day pondering all the most difficult topics of life? I wear people out sharing a fraction of what is going on my mind at any given moment. I see their eyes glaze over. I don’t fault them. It is what it is.
We all pass through that hole in the sky alone, at least as far as anyone we might know on this side; and I feel strongly that those who do the work of learning to create beauty in themselves all offer gifts to those around them without even trying.
I do think I give people the gift of courage sometimes even now, but I can do better.