What do you mean when you say "don't take life too seriously"?

1. It doesn't matter because we're all gonna die anyway and nothing we'll have done will matter in the long run, because we will all be exstinct in thousands of years (geesh).
2. It doesn't matter, because the afterlife is where it's at.
3. Life itself is important; it's the societal "games" people play that aren't.
4. We should all do what we want and to hell with everyone else (who hasn't had one of those days?).
5. We should do what we want and be cool with each other- because harmony is healthy.

Personally, I go for #3 the most, with a bit of #4 and #5 thrown in for fun. I really think it's all a bunch of bullshit games we've created for ourselves to play to measure our success... makes it more interesting for some.. others end up ruined over it. You can probably guess what kind of person I am. Probably stems from the fact that I'm a non-competitive only child, but meh. Least I won't die of a stroke.

 

All of the above?

 

Dude, what the hell is wrong with me? I should have made this a poll.

 

Wow. You're eclectic.

 

6. I don't care enough to respond, so I'm just going to post 6 to pad my post-count.

Srsly, guys?

 

1

who is gonna remember what we used these words that we use

Edit: when the thought of human is gone

 

I had a sibling growing up, competition drove me to be way non competitive.

1, 3, 4, 5

 

I, personally, am a believer of No. 3, though I'd say a combination of No. 4 and No. 5 would be the more common usage among the more average (not hippie) consensus.

 

"Life is far too important to be taken seriously" -- Oscar Wilde



I think I disagree more with what people term "taking something seriously" since it is very often not serious behaviour at all, given the actual nature of life.

Laughing, joking, farting around, doing the things you love, and facing your choices with gusto. This is taking life seriously to me, but in the common parlance is most often deemed to be frivolous.

So I suppose a tentative #3, but with splashes of the others.

I don't think my life has "cosmic importance" or any inherent duties to take seriously, but I should still deem my existence the awe it deserves.

Serious people, do not take their existence very seriously

 

Because even if there is a heaven and hell and it's those kinds of stakes (to me the most extreme paradigm to have to consider) to take life too seriously and let it crush you would be folly. No matter what your belief system, unnecessary stress doesn't help you achieve anything so it's better to not take too serious of an approach to life, even if it really is all that severe.

#5 is my favorite choice.

 

I like a combo of 4 and 5.

there's also something so inherently absurd about existence, and the human condition in general. taking that shit seriously all the time is a one way ticket to the asylum.

 

Real talk

lol I like that

 

you can take life however you want to. Imagine you are the perfect version of yourself, imagine yourself with none of your own self-perceived flaws. This person will die with a smile on their lips, a heart worn and weary from decades of loving and living, and mind that has been nurtured into a perceptual and cognitive hurricane. How does this person take life?

Take life this way.

 

Definitely 5. Now is all that matters. The present moment that we all live in. I think it's equally wrong to live in the past as it is to live for the uncertain future.

Enjoy the present. Don't intentionally do anything to lesson anyone else's enjoyment of the present. Those are my very simple rules to live by.

 

Uhuh. I agree.

Even thinking about this is making me take life a little too seriously. I mean I just live, and good stuff happens.

 

I think a lot of people don't take life seriously enough. I mean by life not just human beings but all life. Maybe that's why we're so callous about destroying it. We just assume it'll always be there.

 

to me, the thread title question would mean: don't invest too much emotion in expectations. it also means yes, you will be injured, there is none of us escapes being disliked for something by someone, but neither of these means we can't find some happiness and gratification out of living anyway.

bah, even that isn't saying it very well. life goes on, with or without us, and it isn't all bad, or all good, or all anything. but it IS endless different things, even when our immediate vacinity might be denied them.

 

Regardless of what station we feel we might have achieved, be it glorified or depraved, our lives come to us as an endless progression of sensations of varying intensity. Some of which we call pleasant and some not so.

 

'Endless' implies no beginning or end, which doesn't actually fit with the fact that we do have a beginning and and end, at least insofar as sensation is concerned.
Also some senations will be unpleasant whether or not we label them.

 

Other than by virtue of a story told to me about my "beginning", I am unaware of a time when I was not. Regardless, a better term than endless might be uninterrupted.