“If this was the only life he’d ever tasted, who was he to judge whether it was rich or poor in the stuff that makes life worth living?”- Timbuktu, Paul Auster
I posted a variation of that quotation as my Facebook status recently. As typically happens with uncredited quotations or lyrics, the words were misconstrued as being my own. Among the comments I received was this philosophical one:
“You don’t feel that there’s, objectively, anything that makes a life ‘rich’ and worth living?”
I failed to elaborate on my thoughts until now. Here’s the thing. No, there isn’t an objective measure of what makes a life worth living. But let’s say there was. Let’s say, for example, that orgasms were a measure of something that makes life worth living. Would someone who’s lived through more orgasms automatically have a life more worthy of living than someone with fewer orgasms? Do premature ejaculators, then, have an unfair advantage? Would a very busy internet-aided weekend give someone a shot at a happier existence?
How about love? Surely, if there’s one facet of the stuff that makes life worth living which we all seem to be striving for, it’s love. Do you measure love by how many people you’ve loved? If so, doesn’t that contradict the very notion that many people have about love’s singularity? Is it how strongly you’ve loved? How often? How long? Where’s the measurability there? Do you revert back to orgasm counts? I love you’s spoken or heard?
What about smiles? Does smiling more than anyone else mean you’ve lead a richer life? Orgasms might be reasonably estimated through a bit of arithmetic (or maybe algebra in some cases), but what about smiles? Do any of us even have a slight approximation of how many times we’ve smiled? Who cares about the honesty of an orgasm; but a smile’s honesty surely changes the amount of value it brings to a once-tasted life.
What about nights so good that their memory is too painful to relive for the mere fact that they could never be relived outside of recollection’s limited parameters? How much value is in a night if it is only tasted once? Or is there more value in a night so good that its inability to be perfectly repeated brings pain?
People seem to count the richness or poverty of their lives in plenty of measurable ways, none of which truly determine how rich or poor their lives have been. Money in their bank account. Time in between sexual encounters. Number of times that their book has been purchased.
I was asked, too, by the same commenter, whether the question was rhetorical, whether I agree with the notion that we’ve only tasted one life, whether everything is relative.
I think the question functions well (best, actually) as a rhetorical one, but we’re far past that point. I think we can only taste one life, and the fault is in thinking we live a buffet. We think we can taste others’ lives, and we try to compare their measures of happiness with ours. An orgasm is not a centimeter; it has no universal value. All smiles are not created equal. I dislike peanut butter and you do not.
This is the only life you’ve ever tasted, and who are you to say whether it is rich or poor in the stuff that makes life worth living? What it comes down to, in my opinion, is that if you think or feel that the life you’ve lead has been rich in the stuff that makes life worth living, it probably has. If you think or feel that the life you’ve lead has been poor in the stuff that makes life worth living, it probably has. Or you just like complaining.
Yes, this post has previously appeared on this site.
