Life stages and motivations

George G Clark, 4 November 2009

As I move from cradle to grave my motivations change. I assume it is the same with most other people. The following matrix offers a map that helps me (and thus perhaps you) to make sense of what is going on.

The matrix draws loosely on Hindu typologies with the four life stages crossed with the four main types of motivations. The typologies are more or less self-evident but they are described elsewhere.

Note that the axes have a very loose time dimension with a shift from (1) students motivated by pleasure through (2) householders motivated by success (wealth, fame and power), and (3) retirees motivated by duty (to your community and to your higher Self) and then to (4) saints motivated by liberation (and the fearless peace that passes all rational understanding).

		Motivations
		Pleasure	Success	Duty	Liberation
Life stages	student	1
	householder		2
	retiree			3
	saint				4

 

·         In the modern, materialist world few people advance beyond seeking pleasure and success as householders.

·         The path of desire for pleasure and success is mainly for the student and the householder.

·         The path of renunciation involves duty and liberation and is mainly for the retiree and the saint.

·         In the Hindu tradition the retiree is also called a forest dweller. For such people pleasure and success are seen as too trivial to satisfy their total nature. They thus rest in silence and solitude so as to dutifully make the inward journey and thus turn their minds around.

·         The saints have turned their minds around. They neither hate nor love anything. Time and place have lost their hold. “The mere presence of these (people) in a society to which they no longer belong, by its affirmation of ultimate values, affects all values … the super-social and anonymous life of the truly poor person who voluntarily relinquishes all obligations and all rights, represents (Hindu society’s) quintessence.” Coomaraswami (1957)

 

The sixteen boxes make divisions and edges that are sharper and clearer than my experience of life to date. I have been a lifelong student and never married or had children. I have lived in seven different countries where hedonism and workaholism were close companions and a source of much pleasure and success. I am now 60 years old and have been semi-retired for ten years. These days I reckon myself to be world weary but reasonably motivated to dutifully seek liberation by treading the path of renunciation.

 

So there are rough edges but the map helps me to make some sense of what goes on in my head as I move from cradle to grave. How about you?