A lifeview is our set of ideas about the world and how it works (like a worldview, but more specific). It asks things like:
- What gives life meaning?
- What makes your life valuable or worthwhile?
- How does it relate to other people (family, community, etc)?
- What do money, fame, and accomplishment have to do with a satisfying life?
Quote
The desire of leisure is much more natural than of business and care.
Sir W. Temple
Lifeview
The fundamental meaning of life is to playfully and leisurely create: experiences, moments, memories, that kind of thing. Because we live in a society, this act of creation must involve not just ourselves, but the experiences, moments, and memories of those around us. There is no teleological reason to be, but to be complete is to form relationships and to create, to understand, and to enjoy. The meaning of it isn’t to find someone to tells us who we are, but to discover and understand the place we are in, to improve how well we see the things that contain us - our minds, bodies, planets, etc. Part of this process is a happy one, often it is a frustrating one, at times it can be a terrible one - but fundamentally the pursuit of the good life isn’t to avoid those things, but to revel in the process if we can bring clarity to our existence. I don’t see this as a work thing, mind you: it is a pedagogical view of doing and learning through play, much like the leisurely aristocrat of times past.
A meaningful life, then, is one that offers harmony in the union between “soul” and body, between how we rest and play and what encompasses most of our time.
In terms of money, I do not consider it a fundamental part of life in the philosophical sense, although I do think it is a critical necessity in the society we have constructed, as a compromise and, in some way perhaps, as a way to equalise the workload of a task (although often poorly done in practice).