I'm Dr Orion terban and this is psyx Better Living Through psychology and the topic of today's short talk is the best that life has to offer so I recently got back from spending a month in Japan and I was inspired by my time there to share with you one of my favorite poems don't worry it's very short in fact it's only three lines long it's a translated Haiku and it goes like this oh snail climb Fuji but slowly slowly I love this poem because there is so much wisdom contained in those three lines and I
think a lot of this wisdom ultimately pertains to the best that life has to offer now if you don't see that yet allow me to explain three very important teachings contained within this poem the payoff is the third teaching so be sure you listen all the way to the end first of all it's important in life to dream big when it comes to most people their problem is not that they're arrogantly overestimating what they're capable of accomplishing it's true that there are some people out there who have an inflated sense of self-worth and competence but
even when it comes to such people the ends to which they hope to apply that inflated sense of self-worth are so petty and pathetic that they are unlikely to produce a great deal of fulfillment to say nothing of happiness for themselves or others though as I talk about in my episode why I talk about sex and money they may have to attain those things first in order to facilitate Their Own disillusionment no what I love about this poem is that we're addressing a snail oh snail right now the idea of a snail climbing Mount Fuji
is ludicrous on the surface Mount Fuji so big little snail so small right but that's better than the alternative it's better for a snail to aim at climbing Mount Fuji than it is for a snail to content itself with immediately achievable goals it's important in life to dream big because spoiler alert that's actually what life is for life is for the attainment of our dreams so why not climb Mount Fuji live and epic life okay now the second piece of wisdom pertains to how the snail is going to go about his task oh snail climb
Mount Fuji but slowly of course the snail is g to climb Mount Fuji slowly it's a snail so the second piece of wisdom contained in this poem is that you have to do things in the way that you can do them the poem doesn't say oh snail soar to the top of Mount Fuji or swim to the top of Mount Fuji or leap to the top of Mount Fuji it says to climb slowly because of whom it's addressing a snail so the first two things are kind of in jux opposition to each other the idea
is to dream big to Aspire beyond your capacities but to achieve that dream within your capacities both things are actually possible the goal is beyond you but the means are within you okay the poem is an acknowledging that the only way for a snail to climb Mount Fuji is slowly by analogy the only way that you can achieve your dreams is in a manner amenable to your nature you can only achieve your dreams in the way that you can achieve them you're not going to do it the way that I'm going to do it or
your parents did it or your girlfriend wants you to do it or your Society tells you you should do it okay you're going to do it in the way that you can do it do you understand the idea here is to become very very clear with respect to your nature your preferences your abilities your capacities what really works for you what you really want and to align your means with that nature because this is going to greatly increase the likelihood that you succeed that you actually get somewhere now before I go any further if you're
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I really appreciate it thank you now the third piece of wisdom is actually the most important and it has to do with the final word of the poem Oh snail climb Mount Fuji but slowly slowly now the first slowly has to do with the fact that we're addressing a snail like of course it's going to climb slowly but the second slowly seems kind of redundant doesn't it poetically the repetition is an intensifier in the sense that slowly slowly me something like very slowly but I think it's unfair to the poem If we stop our interpretation
there now what you have to understand here is that the poem like many Haiku is actually an allegory in a literal sense Mount Fuji is the highest point in Japan but in an allegorical sense it represents the highest goal to which a little snail which dwarfed by the immensity of nature represents you or me could possibly Aspire that's what the poem is exhorting us to do to aim for the highest goal we can possibly conceive and to achieve that goal in a means aligned with our true natures and if we do all that then really
what's the point in hurrying think about it there's no higher point in all of Japan so so if you actually get to the top of Mount Fuji then all that's left for you to do is to come down there is no higher goal so the idea here is to orient ourselves toward the highest goal we could possibly conceive and to spend as long as possible in the attainment of that goal and with this in mind the best possible goal is an infinite goal one that can't ever really be attained but that gives us the pretext
to eternally climb towards it because this my friends is where happiness and fulfillment lie not in the gaining not in the achieving but in the climbing if you ever actually achieve a goal then either the whole journey ends or you have to suffer the decline that inevitably follows remember the worst part of a road trip is a so the idea is not only to climb Mount Fuji slowly because us little snails how else are we really going to do it but to do so slowly slowly if we're doing it right it's gonna take us a
long time to get where we're going but it's really the only show in town so why are you in the hurry to get to the credits and this process of moving in the direction of our highest conceivable goal just might be the best that life has to offer there is by definition nothing higher such that if we actually attain this goal it's either the end of all life or the beginning of a decline so the best that life has to offer is something like endlessly striving toward an infinitely receding goal of the highest virtue and
magnitude not bad for a three-line poem huh we are happiest when we're climbing so if you're in a rut if you're not feeling very good then maybe you either need to start gaining some elevation or to seek out a higher mountain to climb look around you what's the highest mountain you can see that's your goal and once you found your goal you'll discover who you are as you climb it and this knowledge will inform how you climb it's reciprocal there's no hurry because there might not be anything better life has to offer once you're done
what do you think does this fit with your own experience let me know in the comments below and if you've gotten this far you might as well like this episode And subscribe to this channel you may also be consider becoming a channel member with perks like the priority review of comments or booking a paid consultation as always thank you for listening
