My friend. I have spent some time thinking about you and about your life, and I find myself considering my own life again. A particular theme stands out to me – one that underlies much of our shared culture. This theme is existential, that existence precedes essence. That is, meaning in life, in the grander sense, is simply what life means to me. I recall one moment of revelation and what felt like the curse of clarity.
It was late one night in a hotel room, several stories up. There was one big bed between four of us, so I elected to take the floor. While they slept, I sat there in the dark staring at the balcony, trapped in that black box and ruminating on escape. Please note, I am being intentional about my word choice here: a black box records information regarding a plane and is used to investigate the cause of incidents. I would come to find that dark room to be a black box, recording the final moments of a life in free fall. At that point in my life, I reveled in my practice of hedonistic liberties. I pursued pleasure and I found it often, but it always came to an end, and it always came with a cost. I learned that what we love we can never have enough of and what we want, and need, is always more than what we had before. The novelty of pleasure faded and its reward diminished, but its cost grew and compounded. I looked at that balcony; I cast my imagination over the railing, felt the wind and the sense and significance of an instant. I saw over that balcony an opportunity. If I seized it, those friends of mine would grieve for a moment, but they would return home, go back to work and life would go on – without me. Life didn’t need me. ‘So why not go’, I wondered. Anything I had to lose didn’t matter if I went; I had nothing to lose, except maybe for a moment, then I’d be gone. I thought about my parents, they would grieve and they would grieve long. I didn’t want that, of course! ‘When my parents go, then I can go too’, I thought. That afforded me a sense of closure. But it was superficial; an illusion. I had satiated the beast until another day.
I couldn’t possibly in this brief account communicate the distress that I felt in that moment – to be clear, from the moment that I looked at the balcony to my settling the matter for the time being, was about an hour. That moment was significant because it was more than a moment. It was the beginning of the end. This creature had emerged from the shadowy depths of me and, although it withdrew, I had learned that it was there, I couldn’t unlearn this and I knew it would return. And so anxiety gripped me. I had learned something about reality and I was doomed to bear this burden: my life didn’t matter; full of pleasure, full of pain and devoid of purpose.
I am writing this to you because I believe that what I encountered was, in some sense, real. Without purpose we are set adrift. A quote comes to mind by Winnie the Pooh (that beloved philosopher) that goes something like: ‘I get where I am going by walking away from where I have been’. What a nice and pleasant-sounding phrase – and a childish one at that! As the adage goes: ‘to a ship with no desired port, no wind is favourable.’ When we are trying to get away from the bad, we negatively orient ourselves so that our decisions, values and lives are linked to and shaped by that bad. But when we want to build something, we positively orient ourselves toward the good, so that our decisions, values and lives are linked to and shaped by that good. So then, what is good? This good that I am looking toward cannot be in me, in the same way that a traveler’s destination cannot be in him – he won’t go anywhere! As the traveler’s destination informs what is an obstacle and what is a tool; who is a companion and who is an enemy; what opportunity is desirable and what is a distraction, so the good that we look toward shapes us and reveals how to live. Freedom without purpose is akin to potential unused, it is superficial and its end is worthless.
The beast emerged at various times after that moment in the black box and even when it was hidden, I could feel it lurking inside me, a reminder that I am just biding time until I go. One such moment was alone in a garage, late at night. The garage was filled with unfinished project cars and unused car parts – a graveyard. There in the shadows and mechanical carcasses I saw the creature again. Amid all those lifeless bodies, I thought I fit right in. Not that I wasn’t alive, because I was certainly breathing, but I wasn’t living - just slowly dying. Dread came over me again. Perhaps you can’t feel it through my writing, and how could you! I thought I knew too much about this life, that I had been cursed with clarity. But I would soon discover that I knew too little. Sometimes I would close my eyes while I drive, just to see what it felt like. I wouldn’t do it for long though because I knew that eventually the road would vary or, without direction, my hands would drift. I would feel a sense of impending doom; this creature called finality was coming for me. Then I would open my eyes again to see the road in front of me and regain control. What I found disconcerting was this creature that would emerge only within the bounds of those games I played, seemed then to be playing its own game. It seemed that I had closed my eyes and had not opened them again.
I wonder as I think about your life, why are you alive? And I’m sharing a bit of my own life because I wonder what these moments might mean to you – if anything. Maybe this sounds silly, but take me seriously for a moment, because maybe it’s true! It’s a beautiful life; weird and wonderful. I wonder if you believe that? I was pruning a tree recently. I paused and asked God what He was saying. I remember paying attention to my feet on the ground; listening to the birds and breeze; seeing the sun’s light and feeling its heat. I listened to the moment, and it spoke – not with something so crude as words, but in mystery. I discovered reflected in that moment something within me. Love, like a tree, bursts forth with passion – though not all that it produces is useful. I prune it and shape it so that every leaf would grow in the light and those useless things would not draw from its life. This is self-control, that my love may be virtuous and rightly directed; that I may be extravagant in love and restrained when virtuous love calls for restraint. But why does this matter? Because virtue matters! And why does virtue matter? Because life has meaning and I have a purpose – a virtuous end.
Well, my friend, I’m not sure that I’ve said much. I hope that I have at least stirred up a sense of dissatisfaction or curiosity, because what a wondrous journey awaits the one who is dissatisfied with the way things appear to be. There is adventure there in the mystery for whomever will answer the call. Even Winnie the Pooh (that bold adventurer) is willing to go somewhere new!