Part I--You Are What You Love

Please take a couple of minutes and reflect on the statement, “You Are What You Love”. What does that mean to you?

If I love to do something, I will spend most time of my life doing it and I will be influenced by it.

 

Work both individually and with your group to define subconscious and conscious

Definition of Subconscious (and give two examples)	Definition of Conscious (and give two examples)
Your definition: something done automatically without noticing it. Your examples: automatic driving habits, When you are writing and start talking with friend, you subconsciously write down what he or she says. Dreaming Class Definition (Official): unaware, involuntary, hidden, back of the mind, intuitive, reactionary, feeling	Your definition: intentional choice  aware the action Your examples: reading, writing Class Definition (Official): awareness, decision, critical thinking, choice, reasoning

Can you live life without a goal(s)? Think about your definition of goal.

I think we can live without the goal because you don't die if you don't have a goal but such life might not be meaningful. I think there are two kinds of goals. Breathing, eating, are done by subconscious goal to survive. Studying, reading are done by conscious goal to achieve something.

 

 

Humans want something!

Definition of Telos: a goal you are after or aimed at

 

Your Ideas: How do humans go after the things they want (their teloses)?

I think humans will set another goal after achieving one they wanted to achieve.

 

 

 

Thinking vs Doing Reflection: Why is there sometimes a gap between what you know and what you do? Why don't you always just do what you want to do?

I think we can't always do what we want to do because our behavior is easily distracted by emotional impulse.

 

 

We act because   à	Our wants and longings and desires are at the core of our identity, the wellspring from which our actions and behavior flow.
Reflect on the reason	Trying to know my deep desires may help me to understand my behavior.

 

Please follow along the reading!

 

“To be human is to be on a quest. To live is to be embarked on a kind of unconscious journey toward a destination of your dreams. As Blaise Pascal put it in his famous wager: “You have to wager. It is not up to you, you are already committed.” 7 You can’t not bet your life on something. You can’t not be headed somewhere. We live leaning forward, bent on arriving at the place we long for. The place we unconsciously strive toward is what ancient philosophers of habit called our telos—our goal, our end. But the telos we live toward is not something that we primarily know or believe or think about; rather, our telos is what we want, what we long for, what we crave. 

 

(Pause): Humans have a goal.

 

So again, it’s a question not of whether you long for [something] but of which thing you long for. This is true for any human being…You can’t not love. It’s why the heart is the seat and fulcrum of the human person, the engine that drives our existence. We are lovers first and foremost.

 

(Pause): It’s not primarily “I think therefore I do”, it’s “I love (desire/want) therefore I do.”

 

If we think about this in terms of the quest or journey metaphor, we might say that the human heart is part compass and part internal guidance system. The heart is like a multifunctional desire device that is part engine and part homing beacon. Operating under the hood of our consciousness, so to speak—our default autopilot—the longings of the heart both point us in the direction of [our telos] and propel us toward it. There is a resonance between the telos to which we are oriented and the longings and desires that propel us in that direction—like the magnetic power of the pole working on the existential needle of our hearts. You are what you love because you live toward what you want.”

 

 

If “you are what you love because you live toward what you want”, then what is the next question we need to ask?

 

-> "What do you want?"