Meaning In Life

Avoidance Forfeits It

We cannot truly know full meaning in life, until we go through it. 

But, we can learn to recognize elements of that meaning from those we have seen go through it before us. 

The degree of intimacy and understanding then of those elements is influenced by the extent of that observation…and our participation with them.

We can describe life all day, but it is our true encounter with it that impacts us the most. This is one of the problems with the simulated life — it is missing true encounter and therefore remains more like a game, than like reality.

Knowing about death, for example, and actually dying are almost really different things, at least experientially. This distinction could be descriptive of many things about life and our experience of it — knowing about vs actual knowing.

And some point, either by coercion or choice, we end up making the leap from being mere spectators of life to active participants in it and as that happens we become more capable of both engaging it and offering ourselves to it.  Without engaging it, we are largely, in effect, just withholding ourselves from it.

There are a lot of things ‘going on’ in my life right now; many of which I would prefer to avoid.  There are several significant things that I wish I could determine the outcome of — what is going to happen?  Which way are things going to go?  Should I stay in certain situations or should I strike out into new ones?  How will things turn out once I choose?  ...nearly endless questions of this kind.

But, the other day, it occurred to me that I essentially have a choice to make with regard to these things. And, the choice largely comes down to my willingness to accept the fact that these things are in my life, as is the state of them. So, my opportunity (or my choice) is really to engage with each of these things in a way that would allow me not simply to avoid or get past them, but to learn from them. In other words, rather than withholding myself from them in some observational capacity, I actually need to dive more fully into them.  They, in fact, are the things of life that are continuing to shape both what and who I am.   And, so, my attempts to escape from them are really just a misuse of energy for what is far more valuable (if not even productive).

In spite of all the conditioning we have received, what if life was really something far less to be anticipated than it is something to be experienced? What if outcomes are really relatively inconsequential, especially in terms of their importance to the nature of our existence and being?

What if our ‘management’ really just forfeits our experience and therefore all that comes from deep engagement with those experiences?

Meaning comes far more from the living than the knowing about living.