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What Have You Got to Live For?

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by Jason Roth

Sometimes human emotions seem to be built ass backwards. If the guy standing on the bridge looking down, about to prove the remarkable fact that his body can splatter on water, were to feel like he had something to live for, maybe he would bother to get something to live for. The problem is that those damn emotions don't kick in until the "something to live for" has already been gotten. Big consolation to the splattered body under the bridge.

It would be helpful if you could borrow some of the emotion that comes from achievement before the achievement's completion. In other words, use your future emotional reward as motivation in the present. If some emotional bank existed, you could borrow a few hundred bucks in raw "fuck, yeah, I kicked ass" bullion, invest it in giving yourself a kick in your own ass, then settle your debt afterwards.

Too bad emotions don't work that way. I guess you could buy a six-pack of Sam (or, if you must, Bud), or a few capsules of something concocted by some Berkeley grad student, and try to force them. But booze and drugs are like those no-name-brand energy bars. It doesn't matter what the fuck they do to you temporarily, you still need to pump the damn iron. Emotions, like muscles, come after you put in the work.

Great. So given that we can't roll up a few pages of an Anthony Robbins self-help book or Oprah Winfrey girl-power magazine and smoke them for inspiration, where the fuck do we get it? It seems like that age-old question: Which came first, the rooster or the rooster's dad? Some fucking bird must have been the first to fuck, for fuck's sake.

Motivation now. That's what we want. How do we get it?

Lucky you. Since I've been up that mountain, I can tell you. And if I'm lucky, maybe remembering will help me get up the next goddamn mountain. (Sometimes, life seems like a series of goddamn mountains. But you don't climb them because they're there. You climb them because you are.)

There are three things I've found that have gotten me started, and have kept me going. The first is cold, unemotional reason. First you need to choose a goal that's a little more reasonable than winning the lottery or sprouting wings and becoming the first winged asshole to circle the sun. You have to do something that's doable. And fuck the Beatles if they don't like it. I don't give a shit if there's nothing you can do that can't be done. There's plenty that can be done but hasn't been, because some lazy hippy fuck hasn't gotten up off his ass to do it. The "doneness" of stuff isn't some irrelevant characteristic of entities in the universe. Shit doesn't just "happen". Shit happens because someone thought of the shit and figured out how to make it happen.

Once you've got the shit, and once you've got the plan, you still might not feel like lacing up your sneakers and running the 26 miles. But hey, you're the bastard who decided to run the marathon. So who the fuck cares whether you feel like it or not? You need to keep the shit, the plan, and the knowledge that the shit can be done in your conscious awareness. Since I'm a big fan not only of mixing metaphors, but also of running them into the ground, let's call the knowledge of your plan the engine. Emotions are only the fuel. You might be able to get a decent high from gasoline fumes, but without an engine you're eventually going to pass out in the same spot where you started. And the guy who wins the race is going to have a slightly more respectable smile on his face than that gasoline-smelling son of a bitch asleep at the starting line. (You're paying attention, right? This is a car race now, not a marathon.)

So to throw another wrench into the pit stop of achievement metaphors, let's say that rational thought is the first building block of achievement. Reason, not emotion, gets you started.

Number two, which helps you start, and also keeps you going, is self esteem. Self esteem is the emotional sum of all your past achievements. The good thing about esteeming yourself is that you're allowed to casually ignore your many fuck-ups. I don't care how far back you have to go to find something to esteem, just find it for Christ's sake. The fact that you've fucked up 10,000 times in the past doesn't mean that you can't succeed in the future. The fact that you've succeeded once means you can. You did. Case closed.

Number three: you need to take the time to appreciate the process of achieving. Presumably, you chose something to achieve that you have some sort of interest in. If not, get back to the drawing board. (Or if you're not sure whether you're really interested in it, enjoy the fact that you're on the verge of discovering something you might enjoy.) Since life is more than a few moments of having achieved stuff, it's probably worth it to amuse yourself between those moments.

While you're in the process of achieving, emotional reward comes in taking the individual steps toward the achievement. Really, there are two types of emotions you experience along the way towards an achievement. The first is the emotion of having made a single step. This emotion is analogous to the emotion you experience after a complete goal is attained, just smaller. A few of these emotions make you feel good at the end of the day, or at the end of the week when you open up the beer or wine bottle or demand your martini to be stirred, not shaken. (Because you don't want the bartender to dilute your martini in the name of James Bond.)

The second emotion in the process of achieving is unique. In fact, it's an emotion you can only feel before, not after, an achievement has been completed. It's the emotion of taking a step, as opposed to having taken it. Visualize this by thinking of any professional athlete. Any athlete worth his weight in entertainment value plays the game because he likes playing it. Getting his hands on the trophy is great, but to him, nothing beats catching the ball. Unless of course he's a tennis player, in which case he's a fucking idiot.

If you want to be philosophically anal-retentive about it (perhaps that's a redundancy), maybe the emotion of taking a step is really an emotion of having taken smaller steps. E.g., you feel good after making a catch (a step towards winning), not while turning your head or cupping your hands in a particular way (both of which are smaller steps toward making a catch). But it's pointless to break down the steps to this extent. The point is, we're differentiating playing the game from having won it. Moreover, the athlete example is a good one because plenty of athletes have a damn good time playing on losing teams. They're satisfied with taking the steps towards winning. I.e., they like what they're doing.

This last point, that the process of achieving brings its own unique pleasure, doesn't beg the question. It doesn't beg the question because, as I've been told recently, the logical fallacy of "begging the question" is really a circular argument and has nothing the fuck to do with "implying" or "raising" a question. So let's skip the goddamn question begging and get to the point.

The next philosophic question raised is: does size really matter? Uh, I mean, does success really matter?

(Though in case you've ever wondered what Aristotle had to say about penis size... in Generation of Animals he wrote: "such men are less fertile than when it is smaller because the semen, if cold, is not generative, and that which is carried too far is cooled." I think Aristotle might have been sucked into Plato's theory of forms in this case. Either that, or he was looking at an ancestor of John Holmes.)

Back to success. It does matter. Metaphysically, your life depends on it. What your life doesn't depend on is whether you're successful in everything.

A wide receiver in the NFL doesn't need to win every game. He does need to catch the football. He doesn't need to catch the football every time it's thrown to him. He does need to stay in shape and repeatedly attempt to catch the football. He doesn't need to be in perfect shape in the off-season or attempt to catch the football if some schmuck throws it at him while he's at the movies with his wife. The point is, we need to be careful not to switch contexts as we talk about "success". A wide receiver in the NFL is a success if he catches the ball a hell of a lot more times than he drops it. He is neither a failure if he drops the ball once nor if his team loses every game in a season. "Success" is essential to be a wide receiver in the NFL. But it's essential in a particular context.

Now let's be crazy and think outside the football field. "Success" is essential on a metaphysical level because if you fail at, say, getting food and shelter, you'll be a corpse. This is why you don't put all your eggs in one basket and stake your life on one particular achievement. You have to diversify your goals. On the other hand, you don't want to be a contrarian asshole and rebel against the utility of baskets. And you only have two hands, for fuck's sake.

So, for the broader goals, you might just aim for one or two. (Like careers or wives.) For smaller or component goals, you might have a bunch of them running concurrently. (Like ten resumes in the mail or registrations to several dating services.) Failure at a component goal isn't so bad, because you've diversified your eggs. (There ought to be a word, not for mixing metaphors with each other, but with the explicit idea they're supposed to be illustrating.)

Of course, some goals are more important than others. And some goals are broader than others, so when you fuck one of these up, you really fuck yourself. But if you think of the big goals as products of component goals, you'll realize that it's kind of hard simply to "fail" at a big goal. If you fail at a big goal, it's most likely because you've failed at one or more of the component goals. If, for example, one of your big goals were to be an airplane designer, but you haven't yet learned how to read or write, it's probably unfair to consider yourself a failure at airplane design. Wait until you can say stuff like "nuts", "bolts", and "propellers" before you give up on that dream.

If you find that you're failing at a lot of the component goals, it's probably time to change the big one. Or at least figure out what the deal is with all the fuck-ups. You don't just suddenly achieve, or suddenly fail, something great. You tend to know whether or not you're getting any closer to it.

Before closing, I should probably address one last question from the naysaying skeptics before they ask it. That is: "What about forces outside your control that can stop you from accomplishing your goals?"

Well, since an answer to that question occurs to me that's already been said as good as it can be said, I might as well finish by quoting it.

"When you reach for the stars, you may not quite get one, but you won't come up with a handful of mud either."
- Leo Burnett (founder of the Leo Burnett Worldwide advertising agency)

It's a convenient coincidence to find good philosophy for living a successful life coming from one of the most brazenly capitalist of all professions. Some of those guys do know what they're doing.

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