“Each man is questioned by life and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life, to life he can only respond by being responsible.” - Viktor Frankl
The pandemic has been a test like no other. Never before have the lives of so many people around the world been affected at this scale and speed. There has been severe illness, loss of loved ones, economic upheaval and many relationships have been plunged into a deep abyss.
In these moments I find myself searching and asking the ultimate question, “Does life have meaning? What is the point of it all?” Is it just the mere living of a life, pursuing goals like family, finances, academic accomplishments or success, however we define it?
To understand this let’s get to the basics first… you might think I’m being ultra-philosophical but isn’t it human nature to attach meaning to everything? If we didn’t, we couldn’t make sense of all the craziness that surrounds us many times. To give meaning to something helps us predict what we can expect and also to some extent control the outcome.
The more secular view says, meaning is not something outside of ourselves…not some cosmic universal truth waiting to be discovered. It’s a resource we must cultivate ourselves. Meaning is something we must continually find and nurture….consistently. And the most important truth is that meaning equals value; it’s made by us in our minds and it changes over time.
Many sages remind us that to ask, “what is the meaning of life?” is a redundant quest because we ARE life!! Life doesn’t ask itself what it is, does it? The ocean does not ask itself the meaning of the waves!
This is the mind’s game…it wants a conclusion; it wants to deduce and put a label on things but the moment we do that we put an end to curiosity and to some extent movement….like a finality. The more we conclude, the less we experience. AND to have life is to experience continuously… to experience on going creativity and excitement.
In all these years of self-reflection and facilitating others to do the same, the closest I have come to experiencing ‘meaning’ is in those rare moments when life has brought me close to a transcendent emotion…when I have been in the presence of greatness…someone expressing their oneness with the divine; whether through music, dance or any artistic declaration. It’s ineffable, this feeling, but I do believe that it’s the value around which all other values are organised.
We need a relationship with that exalted state and it’s when we don’t establish that it leaves a void within us…we then tend to find something of lesser value to have a relationship with, like religion or politics. At the ultimate level it’s something lacking inside of us which creates a desire to fill that void. It could be described as a searching, a hunger for whatever we call God.
If we ask the Quantum scientist’s view they turn this discussion entirely on its head. According to them this life/our world is a simulation, a virtual reality, and it’s multifaceted. It’s a continuum of energy. This expression of energy has no one single purpose or one solitary manner of manifesting. It is a multiverse pulsating with potential where we live multiple lives, multiple times. There are infinite versions of me, my neighbor, my dog and my plant. If the multiverse is true then I can’t look at this life as a single, solitary, finite expression and most importantly then, I KNOW the answer to whether there is meaning to this life.
Maybe the only meaning is to enjoy my cup of coffee that I’m holding, basking in the warm sunshine while taking the deepest, freshest breath ever!!!
Until next time….
Cheers!
Comments
Post a Comment