Freud’s Summary of Why We're Here or This One?

Freud famously summed up the basic drives of human existence this way: to work and to love. Pretty good summary.

Here’s the summary of human existence that my heart thrills to, every time I hear, say, or read it:

We have not come into being to hate or to destroy;
We have come into being to praise, to labor, and to love.

So close to Freud, yet so far away. This wisdom comes from a place Freud, with his views on Moses and monotheism, wouldn’t care to frequent: the siddur, the prayer book of the Conservative movement of Judaism. The lines, written post-Freud, I believe, are part of the Prayer for Peace.

That addition of the third phrase, “to praise,” is an obvious parting of the ways. It acknowledges that human beings are not limited to the world we experience here as we labor in relation to the natural world in a social context and as we interact with others. We are built for work and for love, much as we might like to deny either one at times.

But as this poem/prayer reminds us, we are also built for praise. Meaning what? That everybody has to have a certain kind of religion or they have “failed” the third test of being human? No. We don’t require that people labor in a certain way only, or love in a certain way only—only that they do labor, that they do love, each in his or her own way, according to her or his unique self and circumstances.

So too with praise. Each of us can praise in our own way. For some this means chanting ancient psalms in shul, singing gospel songs in church, kneeling in prayer in the mosque, or dancing ecstatically in the sema. For others it can mean making room in one’s life for a sense of awe, wonder, and gratitude for the gift of existence, a gift one is not responsible for and is not in control of. To praise: to recognize an inestimable good beyond oneself, a gift that one can never exhaust, never repay.

To me this is as basic to our existence as working and loving. It’s a third way of being in the world, interacting with all that is not our self, that cannot be reduced to labor or to love. When we labor, we interact with the world to produce a good. When we love, our desire for union and communion binds us to another. When we praise, we are not trying to produce a good by our efforts in nature, and we are not desiring or experiencing union with another—whether nature or another self; when we praise, we are acknowledging the vastness and goodness of all that is, all that is beyond us yet includes us and is related to us, and giving thanks for it, this gift that we can never exhaust and never repay.

Peace is not the absence of conflict but the presence of justice, as the saying goes. So the presence of these three basic ways of human existence in the Prayer for Peace mean: we are to acknowledge these three—all three—as fundamental to the dignity of each human life, to be able to work, to love, and to praise, and not to prevent anyone from fulfilling these basic needs or to have contempt for them when they do fulfill those needs; and we are not to judge the manner in which others work, love, or praise, though it may be radically different from our way of fulfilling those needs. Does this one pray once a day? Good. Does this one pray morning, afternoon, and evening, as Jews do? Good. Does this one pray five times a day, as Muslims do? Good. Does this one pray in the woods, silently, wordlessly? Good. For, we have not come into being to hate or to destroy; we have come into being to praise, to labor, and to love.