The Meaning of Life According to Bruce Lee
Martial arts, life lessons, and the art of living.
Bruce Lee was an extremely interesting guy.
He was a philosopher, writer, martial artist, movie star, and inventor of a martial art that is still practiced today (Jeet Kune Do).
Bruce Lee is the martial arts archetype that many people want to live out for themselves. He also wasn’t the kind of armchair philosopher that we see a lot today from celebrities when they start preaching to people telling them to “do X and Y like me to be successful like me”.
Bruce Lee actually had good ideas. He actually wrote interesting philosophy. He was smart.
But, unfortunately, most people just remember Bruce Lee from Enter the Dragon, and they forget about his ideas and his books.
I didn’t forget though. A few years ago, Bruce Lee taught me what he thought was the meaning of life in his book Striking Thoughts.
At the time, I didn’t really understand it, but after reading another book recently, I think I do now.
Let’s piece it all together.
Understanding some cryptic spiritual stuff.
When it comes to big questions like “the meaning of life”, most of us avoid even trying to answer the question.
We say silly cop-out answers like “the meaning of life is chocolate” or serious but unhelpful ones like “the meaning of life is to make a meaning”. The problem is that these ideas don’t help. They don’t make us smarter and they don’t help us live better.
The meaning of life is to “make a meaning”? That’s the philosophical equivalent of answering a question with a question.
At first, that kind of cop-out answer is what I thought Bruce Lee was saying in his book Striking Thoughts when he said this:
“The meaning of life is that it is to be lived, and it is not to be traded and conceptualized and squeezed into a pattern of systems.”
“The meaning of life is that it is to be lived”? Yeah, no shit, Scherlock.
But it’s deeper than that. The second part is really the important part.
It’s not just about “living”, it’s about the avoidance of the over-complication of living. The avoidance of overthinking. The avoidance of “doing too much”.
That’s the part I’ve been missing, and if you’re like me and very success and work-oriented, you probably are missing that too. You’re probably systemizing too much and living too little. You probably have too many rules.
You’re probably, like most people, obsessed with the “the idea”.
The ideal exists in contradiction with what is.
I hear people all the time say “I know myself”.
“I know myself enough to not buy a cake because I’ll eat the whole thing.”
“I know myself enough to not have this relationship because I will get hurt.”
“I know myself enough to not do ___ because ____.”
Is that you? That’s been me.
Now we’re going to bring in another philosopher who helped me understand what Bruce was saying. We’re bringing in Jiddu Krishnamurti.
Krishnamurti was cool. Bruce Lee would kick his ass in a fight, but if they did a podcast together or something, they would create some cool intellectual synergy.
Krishnamurti was big into “being free”. Hippy stuff, but I think he was more realistic and in touch with the modern world than most Eastern philosophers. He didn’t preach about ego death too much, he just wanted you to free yourself from what you know so that you can connect with “what is”.
That’s a big mistake people make.
They think that big ideas that don’t exist in reality — like the meaning of life, their egos, or “the best way to do stuff” — are worth basing their whole identity on.
Your “self” doesn’t exist. The meaning of life doesn’t exist. We exist in an aimless void and it’s no wonder we’re all so confused all the time.
The best way to do a heel hook? Now you’re asking a better question, but there are a lot of factors that determine what variant is the best. Different situations call for different solutions.
Life is the same way.
The problem is, when you become obsessed with these ideals, you stop living and you become just like Bruce Lee and Krishnamurti said you shouldn’t:
You become obsessed with the known. You become trapped. You are only existing in the patterns and systems that make life dull and full of problems.
This is getting weird, isn’t it?
We’re starting to get into some pretty “meta” stuff here.
I figured I’d try to leave you with some practical advice instead of just a bunch of intellectual jargon that I’m just starting to understand myself.
The goal is to avoid over-systemizing. Don’t optimize everything. Don’t conceptualize everything. In a world that’s obsessed with knowledge, venture into the unknown.
The meaning of life is to think less. Stop obsessing over being perfect all the time. Thanks to social media (among other things), I think we live in the most self-conscious era in human history, and it’s killing us from the inside out.
People are anxious, miserable, sad, and tired. They’re sick of constant judgment from others and themselves.
You only have one life. Are you really going to spend it systemizing everything to avoid pain? Knowledge is good, but the obsession with systemizing your experience to avoid judgment and discomfort is the antithesis of knowledge. That is using knowledge to create fear when fear comes from a lack of knowledge.
If you’re doing this, you’re all mixed up.
The more you learn, the less you know. The more you systemize about life, the less connected you really are to its meaning — the meaning of just living it. Of just doing the things that are in line with yourself. Things that make you feel connected.
For me, these are things like:
training Jiu-Jitsu because I love it (not because of a medal or a belt promotion or anything else)
writing because I love it (not because I need money or want to get published or want people to read my work)
spending time with people I love because I love them (not out of obligation or fear or loneliness)
The systems that signify a high level of knowledge can (if you are not careful) stop the knowledge from coming in.
That is what Bruce Lee meant when he said that quote above, which I will include for you one more time here:
“The meaning of life is that it is to be lived, and it is not to be traded and conceptualized and squeezed into a pattern of systems.”
That is also what Krishnamurti meant when he said this:
“We are always comparing what we are with what should be.”
Closing Thoughts
We got into some weird stuff today.
It doesn’t really have a whole lot to do with Jiu-Jitsu.
Or does it?
To summarize, this is the biggest lesson you can take from this article:
Cut yourself some slack.
In Jiu-Jitsu, I know a lot of people who get “analysis paralysis” and freeze when the pressure is on because they’re thinking too much. All that knowledge will make you seem dumb if you can’t free yourself from your conceptualized version of yourself.
Just enjoy life a little more. Have some fun. Also, don’t think too much about what is “fun” — follow your intuition.
Be more present. This will also make you better at pretty much everything.
Stay away from the systems that other people have created to systemize the entire world — social media, the news, all that stuff.
Live more today. Go outside. Go train. Go lift. Go for a walk. Read.
The meaning of life is that it is to be lived today.
That, it seems to me, is the best meaning that I can find.
Today’s issue of The Grappler’s Diary is sponsored by BJJ Mental Models!
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