The Opiate of the Masses: It's Not What You Think

The writer and philosopher Henry Wood once penned, “ Simply to live is a wonderful privilege in itself…but to what are you alive?” 

Darn good question, Henry.

So, if I were to ask you what you were about…to describe your “aliveness”…could you do it? To what exactly, are you alive? Is your life a process of marking time, of tearing pages from your calendar, or is there something else? Some may call this an existentialist question, or even a metaphysical one, but I don’t see it that way at all. It's not about why we are here, but about what we are doing while we are here.

Let me explain. A couple of weeks ago, someone told me that he really enjoyed this blog, because it always made him think. And at that moment, something inside me expanded and I felt very, very alive (and humbled), because thinking is the privilege of the living. 

Karl Marx is often quoted as having said “religion is the opiate of the masses”. I think he was wrong. Religion is not “the opiate of the masses”, routine is. Routine is what enables us to go about our lives while remaining numb to that which makes us human; namely, our ability to think, to feel, and to question. 

Don’t get me wrong, I know that routine is necessary in order to maintain some semblance of order. Socks first, then shoes. Check the locks before going to bed. Change the oil every three thousand miles. But when we allow routine to dominate, when we allow our thinking to become marginalized, or worse yet, when we allow someone else’s thoughts to be traded for our own, we have sacrificed our “aliveness” for a cheap imitation. 

When was the last time you thought about yourself? Not like you typically think about yourself: not about what you are going to get or what you want, or about how you look or how you feel, or about what you are going to do next…but about who you ARE. What you truly believe. About the kind of person you are compared to the kind of person you want to be. 

If you only hear one thing that I ever say to you, let it be this: Open up to your life. Think more. Question your assumptions. Do something unexpected. Carve your own way. BE ALIVE UNTIL YOU’RE NOT!!  

  

You will not always (and maybe even not often) agree with my view of things, but that’s okay. You don’t need to think I’m amazing - you just need to think. Because the thoughts you think, and the actions you ultimately choose because of them, are the essence of your “aliveness”. 

I hope you have a great and amazing and thought-filled life. And in the short-term, a really satisfying week.