My Life’s Meaning

For some people not knowing the meaning of life or more specifically the meaning of their life, is very unsettling. We try and escape this essential existential question with distractions and dead-end detours of all sorts (I did/do). The avoidance of death is easy when we’re young, healthy, and maybe even wealthy but the seasons will shift. Winter will arrive for everyone even for those named Young.

I’ve come to understand the denial of my own death is futile and foolish, I have no power over my own mortality, but asking why isn’t silly. Asking why and what life means is what makes us human. It’s connects us to those who have come before us and our shared 300,000 years of human history. Asking why also connects us to the now and what might be. Asking why through the lenses of humility and grace is also the beginning  of wisdom.

When I was a young, healthy and a “broke” college/grad student I felt energized and alive when asking about the meaning of life. Engaging with teachers and colleagues in thoughtful and unencumbered dialogue. It was only when I moved further into my “prime” and began earning hundreds of thousands of dollars did I stop asking why or musing about what it all means. The thorns of life choking my inquisitiveness and curiosity.

I surrounded myself with people who shared my interest in just wanting to have fun. Numbing our intellect and suffocating why. Wealth is never the beginning of wisdom, but it is a deadly diversion. Deadlier still when that distraction becomes a love.

Wealth along with life’s side show of carnivals and circuses anesthetized my inquiry into life’s big questions, including what is the meaning of my life? Slumbering in a field of poppies, I began to sleepwalk through life. For too many years, I was unaware I was ever asleep.

At fifty-five winter arrived and it began to snow, awaking me from my stupid slumber. Awake and asking once again what is the meaning of life or more specifically what is the meaning of my life. My winter beginning as my youth faded, my health declined, and my wealth dwindled. That’s when I finally turned to God, when the world no longer saw value in me, but God did.   

Remembering once again the whispers of an ancient Greek and a wise Jew. Know myself while living a life of reverence to God, to Love, to all living creatures. This will prepare me for the cold and chilly winter ahead. No matter how short my winter might be, winter has arrived. The laws of nature immutable, the love of God absolute, but the promise of spring eternal.

Avoid the lukewarm life of amusement, embrace the life of asking why. It’s always better to have asked why, then never to have questioned. That’s how the meaning of life, your life is revealed.

God’s Love will follow and sustain you through all of life’s seasons, including winter. God is alive in all seasons and all seasons will return again. That’s the promise of Love.