The "ought" of the meaning of (gregarious) life

The meaning of life? Life has no meaning.
The purpose of life? Are we looking for an objective answer: is this possible?
The essence of life? Animation? Or is it desire and its nature?
When we get what we want can we still want it?

Friendship:
My friend deludes himself as to what he is, wanting to be something greater than who he is, always wanting to be seen, as the one in power. Yet he is a compulsive liar, convinces himself that what he wants to have happened has happened. He is closed off to advice and suggestion, for then he wouldn't be in power, and he uses his friends, who care for him, while he only cares for himself. But he's not insincere because he doesn't try to act any differently than how he is. Is he a lost cause or can we get him to realize that how he's acting is wrong if he wants to keep his friends (yet without threatening him, or he might think that it's acceptible). We're not here to help him and be HIS friend yet nor is he here to help us and be our friend. We're here to help each other, listen to each other, respect each other (and that means not lie to each other), and actually be to each other what friends are, which means care for each other (to have concern for your friends' well-being and interests AS MUCH AS IF NOT MORE THAN your own),forgive each other, and reciprocate. Reciprocation is the most important: we must do for our friends what they do (or even would do) for us.

"Proudest Monkey"

Simply the title of this song from Dave Matthews' album 'Crash' expresses so much. To deem oneself a monkey is already to call oneself an animal, to lower oneself beneath the widely believed conception that humans are above animals, and somehow, perhaps because of language, closer to the gods than to animals. Yet we share in an "abysmal bodily kinship" with the animal: we have feet with toes. Looking at and recognizing my feet as feet always brings me down from the clouds to the earth, where I cannot escape having to dwell with my brother goats and sister pigs.

But to be proud is uniquely human. Pride is what raises us up, makes us believe we are close to the gods, a sort of pretention. So to say "proudest monkey" is a contradiction in terms. Yet pride is moreover our respect and appreciation for ourselves and or due to our achievements. So to be the "proudest monkey" would be to have realized one's bodily kinship with the beast but to not let that keep one down; to, as a beast, achieve and accomplish goals that will make you proud. We are monkeys, but don't let that hurt/ruin your pride. Be the best you can be, even if that is only as an animal incapable of becoming our ideal, our god.

Play and Appreciation

Playful perception is necessary for playful contemplation: the essence of appreciation. For to perceive perception as work, without caring for the way things appear but concerning oneself only with the things, is to make contemplation work. Then all becomes work and the only way to appreciate anything becomes to appreciate work, which never comes if all is work.

One can only play, just as one can only work. Play, for those who don't appreciate, is work, and work, for those who do, is play.

Example: I enjoy the way in which the cigarette butts rest in the ashtray, stuck together yet protruding in every direction from what seems to be a center, holding them together; and the way in which a sprinkle of ash shows that someone missed the ashtray, light grey specks against the brown leather backdrop of the table.

Running in Place

The concept of progress:

we get fitter, we actually are somewhat training ourselves and becoming better able to find a mate, yet back in the day it would have been better able to evade predators, fight prey, in short, survive; to preserve ones life. Why? Because life itself wants to live: why else would we feel pain when hurt, when starving. Immense pain before death when you are killed - perhaps eaten - and a tremendous pain (even) when the body begins to feel close to it.

The pain sets in and we grow stronger, even though we are still not moving anywhere. We are bettering something (technology? perhaps ourselves or the ease of our lives) while all the same in fact not going anywhere. The root of progression is a moving forward that never begins. The running could do us good (whatever that means) but insofar as we remain in place the running creates the illusion of a progression that consoles us when we think we actually might not be progressing. We live the "truest lie".