Let me begin by telling you something about yourself. To one extent or another:
You are struggling in your work or because of a lack of meaningful work;
You are intimidated by others, their looks or ability, their success, their apparent good fortune or happiness;
You are self-conscious about your appearance;
You feel guilty about things you have done or failed to do;
You have a hard time accepting yourself and forgiving others;
You are insecure sexually;
You are imperfect parents or imperfect children of imperfect parents;
You are frustrated husbands and wives, or frustrated not to be husbands or wives;
You have secrets, which you might betray or which might betray you at any moment;
However successful, you are a failure in important ways,
in ways that matter greatly to you, and often to your loved ones;
Beyond all this, your life is stressful, your happiness fleeting, your health insecure;
You worry about aging;
You worry about dying;
Your heart has been broken by betrayal or loss;
And however deep your faith or secure your beliefs, when the roof caves in you shake your fist at God, or the fates, or life itself;
You ask the question, "Why?" -- "Why this, why me, why now?:"
You ask the question, "What does this all mean?"
"What does this all mean?"
Life is not a grim business -- in Hobbes' words, "nasty, brutish, and short" -- but it is a difficult business, and the meaning part is in some ways the hardest part. In this respect, we are very much like one another. Especially when we are struggling. Those are the times when everyone else in the world except us seems to have figured everything out. I can promise you, they haven't. All that separates one cocky high flier from someone struggling to find meaning in his or her life is a single trap door.
Sometimes even less than that. Sometimes lots of little things add up and weigh us down. I know this, because I have counseled so many -- and you can mix and match here -- beautiful, successful, rich or brilliant people whose lives are a hidden shambles. Some of the most superficially impressive people I know hide behind a veil: self-doubting; unsteady; fearful; angry; unloved; unloving; unhappy; unwell.
Our lives are filled with joy as well, with periods of contentment when we take full pleasure in personal or professional success. But strangely, our good times don't weigh in as heavily as do our bad times. We tend to take the good for granted and begrudge the bad. "What did I do to deserve this? Why me? Why now?" It is only when we are struggling that we ask the question, "What does all this mean?'And when things are going, perhaps not even bad, but not quite good enough, almost all of us contrast our own inadequacies and confusion with the apparent self-assuredness of our neighbors. They are getting life right, why can't we?
The assumption itself is flawed. No one gets life right. None of us are in control here. Take happiness. For all of us happiness is a chancy proposition, certainly not a birthright, and as often a matter of happenstance as it is a reward for skillful living. No matter how many self-help writers print up instruction manuals offering seven easy steps for happiness, success in relationship, or spiritual satisfaction, the buyer should always beware. Even health guides promise far more than they can possibly deliver. We can take fastidious care of our bodies and yet fall mortally ill, even at a relatively young age. Vegetarians die; jogger die; people with low cholesterol die. The same holds for promised spiritual rewards. If anything, the prayers of the pious are answered far less often than are the whims of the libertine. In any of our endeavors for self-improvement, we can do everything right, only to have our dreams dashed against unanticipated reality. Conversely, the best thing that will ever happen to us may prompt us to burst forth from the ashes of a life gone completely awry.
But there is one thing all of us share in common. Not one of us at a moment of crisis or bewilderment has failed to ask the question, "What does this all mean?"
Let me begin my response to this question with a disclaimer. I don't know. I simply don't know what all of this means. And I don't know anyone who does. Some may claim to have all the answers. In my experience, these people almost always know less than those who claim to know nothing. Socrates once said, "I am the most ignorant man in Athens." He was boasting. He knew so much more than everyone else that he knew how little he knew.
But I do know what some of this means. Meaning is not absolute, not relative, but contextual. If we make another person happy, we create meaning. If we accomplish a difficult project, we create meaning. Neither is intrinsically more meaningful than the other. For instance, Einstein didn't necessarily have a more meaningful life than any of you who can honestly claim to have had a happy marriage. Just before he died, J. Paul Getty said that he would trade his entire fortune for a single happy marriage. Far too late, he may finally have gotten his priorities straight.
Unitarian minister Robert Fulguhm and others have said that our goal is to find meaning in life, not the meaning of life. That is a good start. Meaning is not a buried treasure, it is a spun web. A web cannot exist unless it is connected to some sort of outside frame, but the web is what we add to that frame to create life's fabric. It is what we weave on the loom we are given to create a work of art or a warm garment. When it comes to the art piece or the garment, tastes differ and over the centuries styles change. In this sense, meaning is not intrinsic or essential, but extrinsic and existential. Not ultimate, not relative, but woven in a contextual context that give substance to insight, visions, and dreams.
Look at it this way. Your life is a series of projects. A vocation project. A love project. A son or daughter project. A parent project. And along the way there are art projects and science projects, house projects and old friend reclamation projects. You might join and support a project to support your church or college. Or to build up your body. Or to read all of Trollop. At any given time we are working at dozens of projects at once. Since most of us don't compartmentalize as well as our president, these projects tend to blur into a daily life, sometimes exhilarating, sometimes difficult, sometimes almost impossible successfully to sustain.
So here we are, all these balls in the air, or not enough balls in the air to feel that we are even a player. The first causes anxiety, the second depression. As I try to write the book I am writing about meaning, I can be anxious and depressed both in the very same day.
But then another project saves me. Often a comfort the dying and their families project. It begins with a phone call, then a few pastoral encounters, then a crisis, then, sometimes, a deathbed confession, or just holding hands with another human being, mysteriously born, fated to die, about to find out what happens next, which neither he nor I really knows. Here meaning is almost completely contextual. Parent and child projects, fight for life and accept death projects are thrown into a majestic mix, where people rise or fall to occasion, lots of tears, a remarkable amount of laughter, regret, sadness, humility, often humiliation, and then goodbye.
Because a loved one dies, does life mean nothing? In absolute terms, one could conclude this. Since none of us escapes alive, life may be absurd. Even if I accepted that conclusion, which I don't, I know that life is not absurd because I have witnessed courage, repentance, even family redemption at times of greatest trial. The meaning I glean from this is written not with the final period, but in between the lines. When we recognize our tears in one another's eyes. When a stubborn man says he's sorry. When a frightened soon to be widow tells her husband to let go.
So let's play a bit. Let's think about meaning in a new way. Meaning is not a science, not a philosophy or theology, but an art. The art of meaning can be practiced on a canvass or in the office, in a relationship or by the bedside of a loved one who is dying. All art takes effort. Every artistic endeavor, whether a symphony or a letter to a wayward child is also a project. It has a beginning, a middle and an end. Meaning emerges when the three are put together into a sustained whole.
So where do we find meaning? I would start here. I would start by sorting out my projects and seeing how I am doing on them. I do believe, by working on something important, that we discover meaning. But we also create meaning. Something that couldn't exist without us emerges by our effort. As far as I can tell we are the only creature who can both discover and create meaning by our own endeavors. Rarely in these endeavors are we on our own. The art of meaning is contextual. Someone gives us the lines and we color them in. Or we give someone the lines and they color them in.
The colors differ by taste and according to circumstance. So do the lines. That is why meaning is not absolute. There are millions of ways to do almost anything. But neither is meaning purely relative. The power of the meaning we discover and create is directly reflected in the impact it makes on our own and other people's lives.
You start a project. It is a magnificent project. You work for a while and then falter. You start another project. You work for a while and then falter. You may have discovered meaning, but since you can't sustain your own pursuit you neither prove your discovery nor create new meaning by virtue of your effort.
Or, you start a project. It is a simple project. You bring it to completion. Something new exists in the world that never existed before. Sure, many things like it, but never this. You did it. You cared enough to do it. It touched and changed the world just slightly, so very slightly. But it gave your life meaning and invested a little more meaning in the world that we all share.
What is the meaning of life? As a big question, I cannot answer it. As a small one -- human size -- I can. The meaning of life emerges when a mother works with her son on his homework. Or when a couple gives away part of their hard-earned money for a cause they believe in. Or when a beachcomber, like Loren Eisley, finds a starfish on the beach and throws it back. Or when a group of people in an office work for months to put together a successful IPO. Meaning is not relative. None of these accomplishments can be measured against the other. And meaning is not absolute. If it were, none of these projects would qualify. But meaning is always contextual. It doesn't require two people or more to create its context, but I know, I know this to my very bones, that it takes more than one living thing. We set out with a goal. We struggle to accomplish it. And on the way meaning is discovered and created. Meaning is an art form. Abstract, representational, digital, it doesn't matter, but always a form of creative connection.
I don't know what my life means, but I know how it means. When I am alone, lost in self-absorption, comparing myself to others, upset with something someone is doing to me, my life churns but means very little. On the other hand, when I am connected, relatively un-selfconcerned, self-accepting, forgiving, and working on at least a couple of good projects, my life is filled with meaning. Not just my life, but the lives that my life touches. Art. Context. Meaning.
I want to close by saying two things. First, I wish to welcome our new members. You are a wonderful group. If you engage here, and it will take some work on your part-- even a few projects -- you will enrich and enhance this church in so many ways. You will make it and your own lives more meaningful.
Second, I want to send my love and all our love to the members of this congregation who are suffering right now. Though they, a few in extremis, can do little now to complete any project on their own, they give my life and in subtle ways all our lives a meaning we could not find without them. A very partial list: David, Maxine, Annette, Linda, Joanne, Christine, for all of us I thank you. Amen. I love you. God bless. Copyright AllSouls 1999.