Meaning

I found a quote from Mark Twain (whose real name was Samuel Langhorn Clemens) that goes something like: “The two most important days in your life are the day you’re born, and the day you find out why.”        I’m not sure we all find out why – and if we do, that “why” may change… there may be more than one “why” in our lives.   But the question this quote leads me to is… “Does life have inherent meaning?”

I’ve mentioned this before, and it fits here, so I’ll tell this story again – Back in 1980, the actor Alan Alda spoke at his daughter’s college commencement.   Within his address, he recalled his own college experience back in the 50’s.    He was introduced to the Existentialist philosophers and their dark perspective.   He recalled a professor who saw one of the existentialist books under his arm one day, and warned him to be careful with that stuff – that it might lead to dark moods in him, causing him to wear black and be all depressed.    Existentialism boiled down says there is no inherent meaning in life.    Alda said in his address that, not only did this philosophy NOT depress him, it actually encouraged him, energized him.    Where many read “Life has no inherent meaning!, and asked… “then why bother with anything?”  Alda said this freed him up to make his own meaning of life and living!  And he did… and he spent the rest of his life doing just that.   

So, is life’s meaning only that which we make of it?    There are many who sense deep within their lives – and life in general – that life does indeed have some inherent mean to it.   They reject the notion that life is at its core random and meaningless, because they have seen and experienced meaning in their own lives, apart from their own meaning they might have imbued it with.  

As part of this, I can think of people who knew what they wanted to do with their lives when they grew up.   They’d identified the profession they wanted to participate in, they knew where they wanted to live, etc.    For some it’s not so much profession, or vocation, as much as it is avocation.    For some, they knew they wanted to raise children, be parents, or what work they wanted to volunteer at something special, or work to invent something on their own time.    I was never that fortunate… or clear, about such things.       

Maybe it’s not something we “do” that gives us meaning… maybe it’s the special circumstances that draw out in us that inner sense of meaning… to live for a deeper, bigger purpose than just working for a paycheck.  

The movie “Hurt Locker” came out a few years back.    It’s about an army guy who work as an Explosive Ordnance Disposal expert in Iraq during this war.    He’s a bomb technician, diffusing bombs.   And he goes through a lot of adventures, takes risks, protects people, has some wild experiences in it all.    And towards the end of the movie, his tour in Iraq is over, and he’s back home with his family.  In this one scene that always strikes me when I see it, he’s pushing a grocery cart in a store, shopping for the grocery items his wife has sent him to get.   You can hear the canned store music being piped in from above.    And he’s there comparing items, seeing if they are the ones his wife wants.  And comparing this scene with most of the ones in the movie… it makes it pretty clear of the differences between life (and meaning) back home, versus life (and meaning) in a place where life is much riskier.   

I am reluctant to tell this story to any people who are not, or have not spent time in, the military.  I am reluctant to tell it because without context – usually not fully appreciated unless they’ve experienced it – this sounds barbaric and savage.    About 10 years ago, I contact my former Ranger Challenge Team Leader from college.   At the time he was preparing to retire out of a successful military career mostly spent in the Special Forces.   Among other things, we talked about his time in Afghanistan.  He said he’d been in a fire fight or two, and that feels now he can die a fulfilled man.    I remember how that sounded – to me… and how it might have sounded to others who didn’t have this background.   

He could die a fulfilled man now.   He’d accomplished some deeper purpose?    He’d faced his ultimate challenge and survived it?   He’d run the gauntlet of the fire of combat and come out a tested fighter.   To non-military people, perhaps this sounds like a misguided view of manhood at best.   

But to those of us who were in, we miss that.   We miss that challenge.  Bu it’s more than a challenge.  There’s a strong sense of purpose… a clear mission.  There’s of course the stated mission of “taking the hill” or something like that.  But there are also the unstated, but still completely clear, missions of taking care of the people next to you, of doing your job to the best of your ability because people’s lives depend on it…  of feeling a sense of pride coming from being part of something much bigger than yourself, something that not everyone wants to do, or can do.   There’s a strong sense of unit cohesion, of brotherhood coming from shared hardship, struggle, and success.  

Since these wars started in the Middle East, I’ve felt torn between two poles – and I don’t usually talk about this because I feel many wouldn’t understand.    On the one hand, I unequivocally believe war is terrible, and many horrible things happen – I’ve seen the results of armed conflict.    But on the other hand all the units I've been with have deployed at least once, and when all this started, I had this strong sense of feeling like I had to go to not let down my fellow soldiers - the soldiers in my former units, the ones I trained with.   I felt like I had a job to do, I felt like – there, with them – I had a duty to be there, and a mission to accomplish with them.   

When soldiers return home, there is always some kind of cognitive dissonance.    Coming from such an extreme experience, of pressure, of bonding, of focus, of heightened awareness, of fellowship shared from deprivation and suffering and facing danger together… and it really does bond you… of clarity of purpose and mission, from a place where the risk of death is present (either lurking around the corner, or staring you in the face)…   and arriving into a place where life is as protected as possible, where children are not allowed to run on school playgrounds for fear of injury (ask about my son’s school), where a person’s physical or psychological limits are almost never tested beyond comfort levels, where life seems just so safe and measured and domesticated.      

For many former soldiers, there’s a period of adjustment needed.    A period of having to come to grips with the notion that in civilian life, there just isn’t that same sense of clarity of purpose.    And once someone has tasted the water of testing in that way, of boiling life down to its essence, then anything else seems a pale reflection of what it could be.   

Sebastian Junger makes this case in his new book “Tribe: On Home-Coming and Belonging”.  He was an embedded journalist with an Army Unit in a Forward Operating Base in Afghanistan for a year.   He and his videographer, Tim Hetherington (who would later die in combat), ended up making an award winning documentary of that year, called “Restrepo”.    This new book isn’t so much about the challenge of integration soldiers face on return, but of the loss of solidarity of purpose people feel after they’ve faced a crisis, and things later return to “normal”.   It’s not just limited to soldiers.   Evidently Peace Corps Volunteers also report higher levels of depression shortly after their return from their missions. 

In an interview he gave about his book, he talked about a journalist from Bosnia he met in 2015.   He reflected on a conversation he had with her about this topic.   He said she’d told him she was a teenager living in Sarajevo during the Serbian siege in the mid 1990’s.  In this siege life was so much more physically challenging for them all, she said.   One out of 5 people were either killed or wounded, she was one of them – she almost lost her leg after an artillery round landed in her parent’s home.    But, she spoke of the siege-time with embarrassed fondness.   She did agree things were bad for sure, but she also said it drew people together.   She said that time of challenge and difficulty drew out the meaning of life for them all.   

She told him, “You know, we all kind of miss it.”   From the interview with Junger as he spoke about her: “And she literally lowered her voice because she was embarrassed by the thought.  And I asked her about that.   And she said, we were better people during the siege.  We helped each other.  We lived more closely.  We would have died for each other.  And now, you know , it’s peaceful.  It’s - -we’re a wealthy society.  And everyone just lives for themselves.  And everyone’s depressed.”

This from the Introduction to “Tribe”; Junger talks about how, just after he graduated from college, he decided to go on a hiking journey across the Western states.    In the Wyoming town of Gillette, a stranger walked up to him – a man bigger than he was.  Junger thought he was going to get robbed.   But the stranger just wanted to make sure he had enough food.   This stranger, who himelf didn’t have enough food, was willing to share what little he had with Junger.    Junger was moved by this offer of generosity!   “This book is about why that sentiment is such a rare and precious thing in modern society.  It’s about what we can learn from tribal societies about loyalty and belonging and the eternal human quest for meaning.   It’s about why – for many people – war feels better than peace and hardship can turn out to be a great blessing and disasters are sometimes remembered more fondly than weddings or tropical vacations.  Humans don’t mind hardship, in fact they thrive on it; what they mind is not feeling necessary.   Modern society has perfected the art of making people feel not necessary.   It’s time for that to end.”       

Where does “purpose” come from?    From the meaning we make of life – from the meaning we imbue it with?    From family?   From establishing and meeting challenges?    From clarifying for ourselves a purpose?      Or is it drawn out from within us – a purpose that’s already there?    From a shared mission?    From sharing struggle… and learning that we don’t struggle alone?

Struggling alone…   

I’ve told the story before of my anthropologist friend who said every culture across time has had at least three things in common; 1- Taboos and mores on what to do and what not to do, 2- Music, and 3- Religion.    Religion – a reaching out to the sacred, and a reaching within to the Spirit.   Religion and Spirituality also seem to be part of the Human Experience – the recognition that there is some intelligence, some energy that is greater than us, and a seeking to enter into that Mystery of life in some way… this always has been, and will continue to be a part of the human experience.     Now, it’s true it’s not always true of every person in any given culture, but it is true of humanity as a collective body.   

I was at a Health Ministry gathering at Johns Hopkins Hospital about 20 years ago.  There were medical professionals and religious leaders there sharing about the role of faith in healing, and how our various traditions fit into this.   One of the presenters talked about a Rabbi he knew, and he said (of his friend the rabbi) “You bring out the ancient in me.”     

Reaching out to the Spirit, to God – that’s ancient in us!    And either drawing out, or seeking meaning and purpose in life… that too is ancient in us!    There’s bible stories of Jesus sending out people to do ministry in his name.   If we read them as just bible stories – boy, do they lose a lot of punch!    It’s not just about nice stories to occupy some of our precious time.    These stories are “ancient”… they help us uncover the ancient part of us, they help us recognize our inner needs and struggles, they give voice to that part of us that we need to hear.  

There IS something to this life!     God, from within and without, calls us… draws us.   Meaning and purpose, whether from within or without – or both – draws us together.      This is ancient!    It’s ancient in us, in our cultural DNA – in our Human Experience DNA.  And who knows, it may even be in our physical DNA.   Maybe when God created our First Father and First Mother – the first parents of our species –  God placed that DNA in them… so they wouldn’t forget what this life was about!    So we wouldn’t forget!           

It’s time to remember!