Falling Back Into “La Joie De Vivre”

“The way to recover the meaning of life and the worthwhileness of life is to recover the power of experience, to have impulse voices from within, and to be able to hear these impulse voices from within.” —Abraham Maslow

Maslow is talking about those things that used to bring you pure unadulterated joy so much that you would cry out in utter excitement, or what he calls “impulse voices.”

The modern world has too many obligations and responsibilities for us to tend to, and in return, it gives us the bare minimum of what will keep us alive.

But, it’s a soulless existence. You get to work a draining job that eats your time and saps your emotions then get back home to your choice between addictions and mind-numbing activities. There’s no joy anymore. There’s no fun. It’s just a series of fleeting moments of transient dopamine hits stolen in between the flood of stress hormones.

The meaninglessness of it all is what’s getting to you, and it’s what’s slowly killing you. Your body is cracking at the seams and your mind is going insane.

The antidote is always to get back to the basics. Find your roots and reestablish the connection with the things that used to excite you.

It’s not that easy, trust me I know, because it’s not easy for me as well.

But we ought to try to find our way back to the very things that used to make us unique and free. Back to a time before the world placed us in cookie-cutter molds and dyed us in uniform colors.

It’s about time we start being original again.