THE AXIS OF MEANING

How do we find meaning and a sense of purpose? Life roles and beliefs change over time. Things that seemed so important in the past might now seem relatively insignificant. In my work I have been able to afford myself of a strict structure. 

The epic fact that I have convinced myself for thirty-odd years that I have to get up and go to work every day makes no sense other than that it has defined a significant portion of my life. The likelihood that this powerful pattern will suddenly discontinue on May 7 is disconcerting, bewildering, scary, and exciting.

It seems that we can assign meaning to anything, and that the search for meaning is, in itself, abundantly fruitful. By the same token, it is easy to see that everything is meaningless in and of itself. This dialectic battle has waged for centuries, and finding comfort in the simultaneous truth of both statements is alluring to me. I have embraced absurdism in my life and am generally content in the certainty that I really don’t know. Similarly, religion offers solace to millions but atheism works best for me. While others have philosophes of life that guide their actions and soothe their souls, I remain a proud cynic. I will not join any club that would have me as a member.

Groucho Marx

Meaningfulness has constituted itself for me in human contact, refreshing ideas, feeling as though I may have positively impacted another person, and other spontaneous moments of pure being when life has expanded beyond its usual restraints. I don’t always know what it all means but those moments seem significant, I feel more alive or worthwhile, as if there actually might be a reason for my existence.

HRH The Dalai Lama

Some believe that meaning is healthier than happiness. The latter provokes a range of definitions. I am pretty sure that what the Dalai Lama calls happiness is not the same thing as that which I refer to when I talk about being happy as a transient feeling. 

Viktor Frankl’s experience in a Nazi concentration camp is depicted in “Man’s Search For Meaning” (1946). To attempt to consider “meaning” or “happiness” under such circumstances seems both bizarre and impossible, and yet there are guidelines therein for traversing the most severe forms of suffering.

In retirement, I will need to engage in purposeful activities. I must try to live fully as often and as consistently as I can. I would prefer to live in a state of being grateful for what I have versus being anxious about what is lacking, in a state of abundance versus scarcity. This must include passion: the actuation of rising up into the realm of the mythical within the continent of the mundane.