25/8/2009 2:15 PM

MAXED OUT LIVING by FRANKLIN MUKAKANGA

Part 1 First things first: Why are you here?

Most people die without ever having lived. They mimic, they fulfill roles, theywork hard, pay bills, raise a family, leave an inheritance, but get to the endof their lives without ever satisfactorily dealing with the question of purpose,which takes many different forms for different individuals, e.g. Who am I?What am I? Why am I here? What does my life mean? Is this all there is tolife? They die as ignorant about the reason for their existence as they werethe day they entered the world.The question of purpose lies at the core of our self-awareness, whether weconsciously perceive it or not. The fact that we are endowed with reasonmakes us seek the reason for our being here, unlike the brute creature,which is content only to satisfy its instinctive urges and follow the course of its pre-historic programming, without questioning, without needing a why,what or how. We need a why, we need a what, and we need a how, in orderfor our time here to mean anything at all.Purpose drives us, in whatever dosage it is administered, whatever shape orform it takes. It lies at the root of a satisfactory human experience, of realization of one’s true potential. There is a purpose for which we areindividually here and a purpose for which we are severally here. A failure tocome to an awareness of that purpose is a dereliction of our duty ascreatures of reason, the consequences of which are the impoverishment of the human spirit, the limiting of the scope of our experience, and the livingout of a most colorless, tasteless, passionless existence.Owing to a failure to address the question of purpose, many who would beable captains of their own and the world’s destiny float along, shipwreckedon the sea of mediocrity, going with the flow, following the masses, andleaving the shaping of humanity to the tastes, opinions and values of others,

with whom they may not necessarily agree, but to whom they have cededtheir will, their power, their individuality.They play roles written out for them by some unseen scripter, being only asloud or as soft as the part dictates, doing only as much or as little as thenorms dictate and becoming no more than they are allowed to be by theunseen directors of the show, who dutifully enforce the strictest adherenceto the script for the ‘good of all’. They believe they are living ‘the good life’ by yielding their individuality and becoming alike as they gather in groups,acceding to limiting creeds and giving up any right to themselves or their ‘souls’, surrendering even their right to choose or adjust their beliefs to acouncil or board.In their well-ordered and structured life, they fail to find themselves, andconsequently, consume their days in an existence devoid of any sense of purpose. They live as hypocrites, they die hypocrites, in the purest sense of the word: play-actors, who have lived in falsehood; pretending to believe orfeel what they do not; living, breathing contradictions; one thing bydefinition and another in conduct; role players who do not have theconviction of bone-deep belief to back up their profession.Hypocrisy is not confined to the morally offensive position of trying to getthe speck out of another’s eye while having a plank in one’s own. It is not just the act of doing what one tells others not to do or of saying one thingand doing another. Hypocrisy is, in its most basic sense, incongruence, andit takes on a plethora of forms.It includes conforming, in the absence of conviction, or even in directviolation of one’s own beliefs, to an arbitrary standard for the sake of fittingin with a norm; another form includes assuming, wearing or ‘putting on’ apersona that is not one’s own, becoming who or what one is not. It is thedeliberate and willful abandonment of one’s individuality and its replacementwith another’s, whether that other is a religious, moral, intellectual, real oreven imaginary or fictitious role model.

Hypocrisy is also assuming or usurping someone else’s role, piggy-backingsomeone else’s purpose, copycatting another’s lifestyle and by this meansleaving one’s own role unattended, one’s purpose undiscovered, one’s ownlife unlived. For as long as one is playing a role and acting out a purposethat is not his or her own, one is presenting a false self to the world. For aslong as he or she tries to pass off this false self as the genuine article, onelives a life of play-acting or hypocrisy. And as long as one is play-acting, heor she cannot maximize their potential and get the most out of life.Hypocrisy happens in at least two ways: Actively or passively. Hypocrisyisn’t just about doing. It’s also about neglecting to do. Thus, while it maymean actively play-acting or purposely assuming a character and role in lifethat isn’t one’s own, it just as fully means neglecting to be one’s authenticself.Hypocrisy is addictive, as it is usually while practicing it that one receivesadoration and applause from, and finds acceptance in, our largely conformistworld. Adoration, applause and acceptance lead to a feeling of well being,satisfaction and accomplishment because it feels good to feel good. It feelsgood to be wanted, to be accepted, to be loved, no matter what the reasonsfor it or the degree to which these reasons line up with our own perceivedvirtues or overlook our well-hidden vices. It even gets to where it ceases tomatter whether the applause is directed towards our true or hypocriticalselves. We literally can become addicted to being liked.The acceptance of the world is usually a superficial acceptance of a façade,making it doubly hollow. It is not an acceptance of a person’s true self, butone of a projected, house-trained, sterilized version of the self. The worldmost readily accepts what it understands and can control. In fact, the personthat is most truly himself frequently finds himself most unpopular in ‘polite,normal society’, or finds him- or her-self excluded from the circles of theresigned, content-to-perpetuate-what-has-gone-before, movers and shakersto whom belong societies, churches and various other social structures, andthrough the approbation of whom ‘members’ are admitted to their cliques.