(Note: I haven't written much on OS these past months.  I have occasionally stopped in to read and comment; however, I just have not had the time to spend here that I typically enjoy.  This little piece on the meaning of life has been brewing around some, and today just seemed like the day to get it out. Somewhere around the seventh paragraph I mention Viktor Frankl and how art can give meaning to life. At the bottom of the post is a video of a very young Charlotte Church singing Ave Maria.  It is art and is beautiful.  There is also a video of a slightly older Charlotte singing Amazing Grace. It is life itself to me. Consider clicking on one of these songs and playing it softly as you read.  Just a suggestion.)

Some Reflections on the Meaning of Life - My Life

Sometimes my life seems to race by as if it had purpose. My mood is bright and light.  My energy level is high, I sleep well (although not enough), I feel optimistic and those little pesky everyday annoyances just aren’t.  I am excited about traveling, about going to the beach and spending the day on the water, about watching a hockey game on television, about my 23 year old daughter coming home from Nicaragua for a weekend just for her brother’s graduation from high school, and even look forward to a little Rachel and Keith watching, and maybe soaking in the hot tub (even though it is summer time in North Carolina.)  Sunsets are beautiful, and sunrises are vibrant and hopeful. I find myself to be pretty accepting of people and things, and in fairly good spirits.

Then something switches and everything becomes plodding, and I feel tired, and a little sorry for myself and my lot in life (it’s a very existential feeling if existentialism can be a feeling), and everything seems dull and gray. Traveling is a burden to overcome, the kids are important but “I need time for myself,” going to the beach means lots of preparation and spending a day on the water is wasting time when I could be working, the hockey game just isn’t fun tonight, and god knows Rachel and Keith are pompous and arrogant. I don’t even notice the sunsets, and mornings are just too damn early to appreciate.

So what’s with this? Is my life somehow sandwiched in between these two feelings, and I’m going to do this until I die, I ask somewhat rhetorically?  I mean, is this all there fucking really is? What is this all about?  Is my purpose here on this planet to vacillate between these two states? Uh oh, it’s that meaning of life thing again, isn’t it?

Well yes, I often find myself pondering the meaning of life. I know you do also – we all do at times. When I was an undergraduate in the late 60’s I spent a lot of time contemplating the meaning of life – or something like that. I was angry at a lot of our social conventions, and our government. The civil rights movement had begun in earnest, we were fighting a senseless war (Vietnam), governmental abuses, lies, and fraud were frequent, abortion rights was a flashpoint topic, drugs were everywhere, and the environment was being spoiled (e.g., we  hadn’t yet constructed the now famous Alaska pipeline.) In the year I graduated from high school (1967) the following happened.  China sent troops into Tibet. The Six Day War between Israel and its Arab neighbors occurred. Race riots occurred in Tampa, Newark, Detroit and Washington, DC. Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American Supreme Court Justice was sworn in. Che Guevara was executed. The Beatles, Aretha Franklin, the Rolling Stones, and Bob Dylan were big.  Star Trek and Jeopardy were big TV hits.

Let’s fast forward forty years to 2009. Yes friend, forty years!! You can see where I’m going with this, can’t you?  Everything I mentioned above is essentially still happening.  Change a few names (not many, e.g., a different war, first Supreme Hispanic, etc) and details; however, it’s about the same. Great and different things have happened in forty years too. Technological advancements in engineering, science, medicine and communications have proceeded at an astounding rate. Man has been to the moon, explored Mars and the oceans, and built huge towers and bridges. Science has brought incredible knowledge to unlocking the secrets of life (genetics, physiology, biochemistry), medicine has discovered cures for devastating diseases, and our communications have opened up the globe to instant interaction.  And yet, something is missing. 

All those 60’s things are still going on. War, governmental abuse, abortion rights, drugs, global warming, China vs. Tibet, Israel vs. Arab nations, and non-Caucasian justices are still a controversy. The Beatles, Aretha Franklin, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Star Trek and Jeopardy are alive and well, and still big in many circles. We have a body of scientific knowledge, yet we still argue about teaching creationism. We have medicine but not an equitable health care distribution system. We have instant world-wide communications, and yet we are no better at discerning truth from fiction, or fact from fake.

So what does this have to do with the meaning of life?  I mean really, what am I doing on this earth? What is the meaning of my life? Volumes have been written on this question. In 1946 Viktor Frankl wrote Man's Search For Meaning that described his experiences in a concentration camp. I first read this book in college and it changed my life. I love this little book.  I have read it and pondered it often.  From these experiences and his psychiatric work he concluded that life has meaning even under dire circumstances, that man’s motivation for living is the will to find meaning in life.  Frankl posited that man can discover meaning in one of three ways: by deed doing, by experiencing a “value” such as love, art, nature, or through suffering.  This is a paradoxical and powerful understanding – meaning through deed, values, or suffering. So what keeps me going at times is the very search for meaning itself. Helping others, experiencing love, and suffering have all helped me find meaning in life.  There were many times; however, that I didn’t realize this at the time.

Ernest Becker wrote a Pulitzer Prize winning book in 1973 titled The Denial of Death.  I love this book too. He theorized that our entire civilization is an elaborate defense mechanism against the knowledge of our own mortality. He elaborates on the concept of heroism wherein man strives to construct something eternal, something that will never die; something that will outlast him after the physical body dies. This pursuit of an “immortality project” is what gives life meaning. Maybe this is why I have children. Hmmmmm, that thought just hit me.  So meaning then is to construct the eternal. I am ready to die, but am not ready to die just yet.

Okay, so life has meaning even under dire circumstances, and I spend most of life denying my eventual death.  What really then is the meaning of my life?  Am I an accidental visitor to this planet self-named Earth?  Am I just another organic creature with a weirdly developed brain and opposable thumbs?  Am I headed anywhere, or am I there and just don’t recognize it? Some days (many) I just live for the day, and honestly, to get through the day.  They are not bad days and at the same time, I am not appreciating the day.  I don’t like this.

Life is hard, and much of it is paradoxical. The Buddha said so. Scott Peck said so. My father said so.  Now, I say so.   Advanced cultures (of which we claim to be one) espouse a reverence for life, yet we kill each other off systematically.  We procreate, raise children, create things, fight each other over land and beliefs, live a daily life in our own little corners of the world, and then die.  And on it goes. We study death and we strive to lengthen life.  We argue, we love, we laugh, we create, we fight, and we die. The only real constant appears to be death. And yet we strive to find meaning in life. I strive to find meaning in life.  Paradoxically again, the moment I accepted that life is hard, I managed to transcend it.  Before that moment, I struggled with life on life’s terms for many years.

I read, discuss, listen, pray, meditate, play and help others.  I still really do not understand the meaning of life, but I somehow know it and feel it.  Really.  I want to be self-actualized – to be at the top of the Pyramid.  But I don’t want to live in a monastery or a cave.

So I understand that I am one tiny piece of a giant cosmic system. My life’s purpose is to give life (something eternal), and to make life possible for others (deed doing).  In doing so, man will survive and advance. Advance where?  Here.  That is the paradox. I am already where I am headed, and so are the rest of us.

I have lived much of my life on auto-pilot.  I did all the things that I thought were “right” and important.  I was a product of my social upbringing and my genetic predetermination.  I thought I was doing life right, but there was always a sense of “is that all there is?” or, as Carlos Castaneda  put it “death was always over my left shoulder.” There was that vague unhappiness, that barely simmering anxiety, that “dis-ease” with daily life.

In my mid-40’s I began to see that I had it all – family, beautiful children, college degrees, a profession, cars, vacations, health care, good schools, you name it.  And yet I was disenchanted.  I wanted more and couldn’t really articulate what it was. And underneath all this outward success was an underlying sense that I was a fraud, an imposter, not good enough, that I did not measure up, that I was defective in some manner.  It took a lot of energy to keep those thoughts buried and out of sight.  I numbed and subdued those demons of darkness for decades with alcohol, work, and success. Every day I would wake up and start pouring that stuff into me, and it would temporarily fill that hole, and then somehow, mysteriously, it all drained out at night. So the next day would be a repeat, and another, and another. And then it all crashed.  My own Armageddon; my apocalypse, the end of my autopilot life.  The beginning of my life with meaning.

Today it is a knowing and an appreciation for life itself. Life with all its paradoxes, twists and turns, and complexities.  It is not mine to understand, and at the same time it is mine to accept and appreciate. I have personally benefitted immensely from meditation and prayer, and from paying attention to spiritual matters. My life is not what I planned, but has turned out well considering how late in life I awoke to life.  The anger has subsided (except for man’s injustice to man) and the acceptance has risen. I still struggle with taking myself too seriously a lot of the time and I do not suffer fools gladly.  I continue my search for meaning, and for me, that’s motivation for living.