To Find Meaning in Ourselves and Others
"Things do not change: we change."
As we get older, the difference between meaningful and meaningless becomes ever more clear.
Can a sunset ever be meaningless? A birthday? Perhaps, a marriage that has lost meaning? One day, you wake up and see your partner and think, "when did this all become so routine?"
There is a sense of dread in thinking that I could someday look out the window at a sky full of beauty and wonder and feel nothing.
Christmas has lost meaning as it has become subsumed by shameless consumerism.
What about celebrating the New Year? All those resolutions? Nope. In bed by 9 p.m. and not thinking too much to change the way I am.
When do words become meaningless. "I'm sorry." "I love you."
We say so many things ad nasuem that the import of what we really want to say gets lost.
For something to have meaning implies that we must face the truth.Thoreau wrote, "However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it..." LIfe becomes "mean" when we give up on it.
The cynic might say, "It is what it is." What meaning can be found in those words? Very little I suppose. The optimist, on the other hand, might conclude that there is a truth hiding below the surface of this sort of resignation. The optimist might say, "let's get to the bottom of this, uncover the meaning, and make some hard choices."
To Thoreau's imagination, ever the optimist, I seek a deeper meaning in search of knowing the present moment. "The universe is wider than our views of it." observes DHT.
