I believe to believe that I will never discover a meaningful answer to any of the great questions that had persistently evaded my pursuit:
Who are we?
Where do we come from?
Where are we going?
Apparently, others have effectively given up the hunt as well, if the results of my casual research for the last 40 years are considered credible evidence. It appears that the best minds have their explanations—physicists, philosophers, spiritualists, cosmologists and even poets have expended considerable effort to articulate their perspective on these questions.
When taken to the lowest common denominator, their answers seem to reflect their personalities, prejudices, and a plethora of very personal experiences and perceptions that are not available to others. Their answers do not seem to fit for anyone other than themselves.
Mans’ search for meaning continues, but I don’t think the answer will be a philosophical generalization that fits everyone. We will probably discover as George C. Scott’s character, Thomas Hudson did as he was dying in the movie Islands in the Stream—that “There is no one thing that is true, it is all true.”
I think Thomas discovered that the truth—value, meaning, significance, purpose—of life is in the living; it is experiential. I am not trying to be cryptic; my statement only appears to be because the answer is paradoxical. If you subscribe to supernaturalism, then one of the organized religions will provide you with an answer which you can adopt.
If you follow a philosophy or a specific philosopher, then your answer has been provided you by that source. The rest of us are left to walk the earth in uncertainty, assigned to an indeterminate metaphysical chaos.
Emotions have developed to guide our adaptation to our environment, and these bio-chemical experiences are, “all we know of Heaven, and all we need of Hell.” Neuropsychologists, neurologists, neurobiologists and a cast of thousands have confirmed that intellectual experiences are molecular, biochemical, and electrical.
So what, you say? Well for some of us, it means that the eternal quest for objective answers is a futile quest; life’s meaning is subjective—personal.
This sounds ludicrously logical—easily acceptable—until you extrapolate that notion to its logical conclusion which is that no one can give you the answer, you will have to discover it for yourself. Life, to quote and age old axiom, is about living; it’s about experiences and emotions—feelings, sensations—whether ethereally aesthetic or coarsely sensual.
I understand how some people become addicted to work, or are compelled to perform endless tasks around the house. Accomplishing small tasks feels good. Shopping feels good as does eating and getting a few laughs in front of a crowd. I think that’s all we have.
The big experiences and the small ones all add up to our life’s meaning—its truth and value. I understand the fun that intellectuals have playing with words, concepts and puzzles, but I think the end result—in regards to the metaphysical questions—is negligible.
When I was a teen, Elvis and James Dean were cool. We discovered cool in the 50s thanks to Elvis. Before that, it was butch cuts, pants around the waist, sliderules and psalms. Everybody resembled the characters in a bad movie about small town Pentecostals in Missouri. It was square to the max. Dorks and Geeks.
Elvis taught us to be cool, to wail, to dance—to let loose and defy the cultural codes that had restrained our personal freedom. Elvis freed our souls from bondage. The cool guys work long hair and had ducktails. They smoked and sulked and it was energizing and dramatic—emotional mutiny in the land of Perry Como and Frank Sinatra.
The dorks buttoned their top button, carried a briefcase in the 11th grade and had pencils in their top pocket—and short hair parted on the side. Elvis taught us how to synchronize our bodies and our hearts—how to feel—to break out of the social bonds that had made life like it was presented in the movie “Pleasantville.” Elvis gave life meaning for the culturally constipated.
Passion and pain, the two extremes of our emotional aptitude, seem to create the intensity that makes life memorable. Love and hurt are mostly hormonal, so when you get to be a geezer your emotions are mediated and you feel “peace of mind,” or “comfortable within your own skin.” A bromide to stave off the goblins of discontent.
Deeply disturbing romance is no longer an option; lust, passion, flirting, and the endless possibilities of engagement with members of the opposite sex are memories. But you have hobbies; you can spend your time doing wordpuzzels, traveling—destination with certainties, without the romance of a liaisons, trysts, or affairs.
No intensity. Meaning goes out the window with emotions. No passion, no reason to live. Life’s tenderloin is over by age 55. But what about plays, novels, the symphony, ballet, art, and poetry?
After the torchlight red on sweaty faces
After the frosty silence in the gardens
After the agony in stony places
The shouting and the crying
Prison and palace and reverberation
Of thunder of spring over distant mountains
He who was living is now dead
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience
After the frosty silence in the gardens
After the agony in stony places
The shouting and the crying
Prison and palace and reverberation
Of thunder of spring over distant mountains
He who was living is now dead
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience
The Waste Land,
T.S. Eliot
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