Saving your eyes for the music? Listen to this post instead:
Part One: Existential Value
Once when I was on my way home from some teaching, I stopped at Costco to buy groceries and fuel up. As I stood at the pump listening to my car slurp $$ out of my bank account, it occurred to me that the amount of money I’d just earned teaching was about equal to the amount of money I was spending on this grocery/fuel run.
Huh, why did I go teach? Well, so I could have money to buy groceries and gas. …Why did I buy groceries and gas? Well, so I can stay alive and be able to go teach again. Huh, so why…?
This loop becomes depressing very quickly unless you’ve identified the thing in your life that creates what philosopher Kieran Setiya terms “existential value.” If everything you do is simply ameliorative, if every action you take aims only to solve some other problem you have, then there’s no net positive value in living.
The things that create existential value differ from person to person. For me, I derive existential value from my musical-creative engagement and, more broadly, from my practice of curiosity—my continual exploration of the world, minds, and ideas.
This reason, that music provides my life with existential value, is subtly different from doing music “because it makes me happy.” My musical work doesn’t make me happy. My musical work adds the net positive value to my life that makes it worth getting up for every day.
I could stop there. That’s good enough for me.
But I can see it’s not good enough for you. So here are a few more reasons.
. . .