Micro-Intentionality: Building a Purposeful Life through Constructive-Destructive Meditation

Have you ever just wanted to let it all go? Have you ever wanted to just throw care to the wind for a time and not be responsible to yourself or anyone else? To pursue pleasure, to wander with the whims of mood, and to do what just feels right?

I think we all experience this at some point. I think a fair number of us act on it too.

“I’ll have one more drink, please, so I am ‘gone’ tonight.”

“Let’s go all the way with this random stranger because I just want to feel good tonight.”

“I don’t give a f*** if I get into a fight tonight, I just want to punch someone’s face in.”

“I haven’t tried coke yet, what can it hurt to try something new this once?”

I think it is one of life’s great mysteries to navigate the dichotomy of pure asceticism, living life like the most self-restrictive monk, or pure hedonism, basking in a Dionysian cornucopia of self-indulgent pleasures and ecstasies.

Is there a middle way to resolving these two seemingly opposite ways of approaching life?

This is where a tweak to your internal evaluating mechanism, that voice in your head that asks, “is this the right thing to do?,” can offer a way forward.

Because, it is so often our sense of morality, that abstract manifestation of our values, that often plays a role in affecting our behavior. Western philosophy has done its fair share to asceticize human activity by exploring rigid rule systems and desperately trying to affirm some reality of what is Right or Wrong.

The problem is no such Rightness or Wrongness exists in nature. Good and Evil are human constructs and highly dependent on circumstances and shared understandings of things. Because really, things like murder, for example, the word itself having evil baked into it by context, are just actions. And actions are simply that, actions.

Why? Because everyone is capable of murder as an action. This is obvious insofar as murder just means killing someone else, which is a physical act.  Its pretty easy for me to push you over a cliff- the equivalent action to pushing open a stuck door. One outcome is an open door, the other is death.

So, if you haven’t thought about this already, morality is placed on top of actions, i.e. it is something separate from actions and physical capabilities. It doesn’t mean they are any less important or meaningless, they are just not related in the way often assumed.

You can’t murder, not because the act itself is evil, but because the act itself is said to be evil. The community or your internal values system has decided that such and such behavior is not supposed to be performed, etc.

With this thought is mind, what are we left with when we talk about Good and Bad?

In my opinion, these terms are so tainted by preexisting ideologies that they are almost useless. Due to this corruption, that black and white right and wrongness that certain religions and philosophies have applied to the world, disrespects the true greyness of reality.

We get SO anxious as a result. If everything has a moral finality to it, then every action is either definitively right or wrong and, thus, we either absolutely f***ked it up or absolutely were right. How can we ask such certainty of anyone?

Humans are fundamentally limited beings. We do not have epistemic access to absolute Truths. So why do we expect ourselves and others to basically be gods of morality, and to know True Good and True Evil?

I offer an alternative in the form of Micro-Intentionality. Do not make every moral qualm a question of absolute Right or Wrong. Rather, make every choice just one piece of a very large life project, such that any one choice cannot totally derail nor is totally meaningless to future outcomes for your life.

This is where the terms constructive and destructive come in. If you see life as a collection of choices that partially do and don’t matter rather than a series of do-or-die questions, I think you end up getting closer to reaching your highest potential as a human being.

In this way, you practice compassion for yourself and others by not applying draconian expectations to situations, while still maintaining a hand on the wheel, so to speak, to keep you oriented in a positive general direction.

So how does it work? Pick a set of words like constructive or destructive, or progressive and regressive, etc- whatever works for you and is less intimidating than the overly restrictive Good or Bad.  Then, whenever, you are concerned about the outcome of a choice, stop yourself and ask: “Is this a constructive choice for me?”

This question is shorthand for the more detailed question: “Is this choice constructive for my life project and will it set up my future self up to be in a better place?’

Yes, this type of question is intentionally vague. But, this vagueness is important for it making it easy to take a quick moment to think like this, particularly, when you just want to let something else take the wheel.

Again, the importance is not being absolutely Right or to know with high certainty what is exactly constructive or destructive for your future- we can’t know after all. Rather, it's to connect most moments, especially those that are seemingly meaningless indulgences, to your greater life project- injecting a micro-intentionality to your crazy night out.

I promise that this can make a world of difference to your self-confidence and self-trust. You are actively giving your moral intuition a workout. It may be weak at first and the first couple times you try this method, you may feel like you use the vagueness of the constructive question to justify a especially careless outcome.

However, the important part is consistency. Overtime, if you keep asking yourself with seriousness how your choices are setting your future self up for better or tougher times, you eventually will get a better sense of what choices to make. You are literally practicing the sort of awareness that pays attention to cause and effect, and other powerful currents in life like the relationship between insecurity and power.

The importance of intentionality in one’s life highlights the damaging effects of throwing yourself to the wind and allowing external influences or pure emotionality to dictate what is right for you. I strongly believe that if there is a True Evil, it is committed by those who give up their agency to acquiesce to destructive behaviors because they have given up on themselves and life.

Not feeling connected to a purpose or project in your daily life is like being caught in a toxic fog. To not feel like you know at least something about what is good for you denies the true agency that is a potential within us all. Without this agency and fundamental self-trust we are like zombies- open and empty vessels that external forces and our own inner tempests can twist and contort to its whims.

Would you rather be an empty, dependent vessel, or an independent, overflowing cup?

Each and everyone of us has the great power to choose our attitude in any given situation. More importantly, we have the power to resoundingly say “No” to destructive influences and risks. In this way we confirm a resounding “Yes” to life, to our own value, and especially to that future-you who will look back and thank you for the choices you made then.

Because even if those choices were “wrong,” as they inevitably were given our ever present lack of knowledge, if they were made with purpose, they can always contribute to our greater and unique life project.

In the great existentialist tradition, we once again find that developing our sense of meaning is crucial to positive outcomes in life. We are all creators of our life story.

How can you write a better story with the little daily moral experiments we carry out every day?

If a god came to you and gave you the choice between two predetermined lives: One where you stay the same throughout your life, making the same mistakes and beneficial choices over and over, or a life where things start out sh*t but end up better and better, which would you choose?

Micro-intentionality will set you up for a life that does get better. Just take that small moment to check in with yourself and before long you’ll find your intuition will be robust and the benefits of certainty will more often bless you life.