Why are we here? Are we sane?

I often wondered when I was young, and when I got older, what the aim of life is. I often struggled to be sane.

Time rushes past us,  we are mostly overwhelmed and distracted the challenges, conflicts,  and complexities of life. For me, life has to have some purpose, some meaning, I don’t live just to pay the bills and be secure in old age, there is no such thing.

So many of us rush from one day to the next without ever quite figuring out why we are here, or recognizing how unbalanced we can become.  We are sleepwalking and obsessed with money. To me, that is a hollow life. Working for money only is just another form of slavery.

One of my favorite guides in life is the very brilliant analyst and philosopher Dr. Erich Fromm, author of many books including “The Sane Society.” He believes our society is driving many of us to madness, and when I watch the news, it’s clear to me that he is right.

“The aim of life,”  writes Fromm,” is to live it intensely, to be fully born, to be fully awake. To emerge from the ideas of infantile grandiosity into the conviction of one’s real though limited strength; to be able to accept the paradox that every one of us is the most important thing there is in the universe – and at the same time not more important than a fly or a blade of grass. 

To be able to love life, and yet to accept death without terror; to tolerate uncertainty about the most important questions with which life confronts us – and yet to have faith in our thought and feeling, inasmuch as they are truly ours.

To be able to be alone, and at the same time one with a loved person, with every brother on this earth, with all that is alive; to follow the voice of our conscience, the voice that calls us to ourselves, yet not to indulge in self hate when the voice of conscience was not loud enough to be heard and followed. The mentally healthy person is the person who lives by love, reason and faith, who respects life, his own, and that of his fellow man.”

Why are we here? What is the aim of life?

I appreciate the notion of a balanced life. I grew up in terror, and am more and more living in reason and faith. And of course, love.  Dr Fromm speaks truth.

Without quite knowing it, I found a path towards being sane in a world that promotes madness.