I suspect everyone wants their life to have meaning. Some become so obsessed with finding meaning they imagine themselves to have great import and powers. Many think they will change the world and make better lives for those living half a world away, save a species, and push the universe to a future of their design and choosing. Most of us have, at one time or another, mouthed the words “I’d like to make the world a better place” without ever giving a thought to what was actually being said.
Personally, I have trouble getting everything on a five item shopping list in one trip. I’m going to design a “better” world for everyone else?
We are all possessed with brains that weigh roughly three pounds, and though each is miraculous and jam packed with complex processing power, we run up against the limits of that power long before we understand much about the universe we occupy. We try. The very brightest among us parse the patterns of reality in the language of mathematics and science, but that is a cold meal; and though we continually push the boundaries of what is understood, we are ultimately left with the mysteries of existence--the passing of time and the nature of our place in the universe as everything unfolds. We reach the limits of our brain power and are stymied. What is life about? Why am I here? What is this for? Why is there suffering? What happens when we die? Why must we die?
My instinctive, automatic reaction when faced with these mysteries is to reduce existence to something that I can understand, and this is a great disservice to the universe. Because I’m a human and hard-wired to look for patterns everywhere, the search for meaning becomes the imposition of my invented meaning, the overlay of my impossibly small understanding on the majesty of life. I don’t blame myself for this. It seems to be a reflex and involuntary, like blinking or shivering in the cold or sneezing. Confronted with mysteries beyond our capacity for understanding we impose patterns that we have the ability to grasp. We guess. We experiment. We learn. With luck, before we have amassed too many scars, we develop an improved understanding of reality. Ultimately, however, whatever understanding we come to is a dull tool and a shadow of what actually is, because we are what we are: a jumble of instincts and emotions and a spark of divinity presided over by a three-pound brain.
Many lucrative careers have been built on gaming these instincts by spoon feeding a digestible narrative to the public. It makes sense. Life is complicated, and fast, and we’re all grasping for understandable patterns. Someone shows up and claims to have a road map? It’s a real temptation. Be it the cure for bad weather or the road to social justice (whatever that means), someone is claiming their understanding, the pattern they have grasped, is superior to your own and will make your life, (or someone’s life, someday, far in the future) better. Sometimes this is true. Often it isn’t. Modern dentistry will make your life better. Critical theory? Probably not so much.
We in the United States are now entering the most divisive and dishonest competition for the narrative we have witnessed in our lifetimes. It is going to be dizzying. It will run the gamut. Racists telling us only they can fight racism. Petty tyrants claiming that only by giving them control of our choices can democracy be saved. Tribal lines will be drawn. Enormous lies, whopper upon whopper, will be told and retold from all sides.
I will be tempted (to protect myself from the dizzying blizzard of bullshit) to grab onto anything that feels a little bit truthy and cling tightly. We all will. The temptation to surrender to one personality cult or another will be enormous. We will want lists, of causes and the positions we should take on each in order to remain sanctified, of people we should dislike, of people we should like and follow. It will mostly be nonsense, but despite knowing this we will desire a pattern that can be understood.
I suggest you fight that urge. Even though every instinct will demand that you find a pattern and lock in. The return on that emotional investment will be minimal. No one knows the future. Not you. Not me. Not the talking head on the television. We are all inventing patterns, even as reality chugs independently along.
Some time ago it occurred to me that had my Fairy Godmother turned up, at any point in my life, with an open checkbook and unlimited power, and offered to grant me anything I wanted to make myself “happy”, I’d have chosen the wrong things. It doesn’t matter, really, at what point in my life she popped in, my choices would have been wrong, and depending on her timing on the arc my life describes I might have chosen fortune, or fame, or a particular woman or a particular job. A different face, a different skill set. Whatever it is, I would have chosen poorly and quite likely have been less happy, not more.
And yet, here I am, more content and comfortable than at any time in my life. Life delivered this not because of anything I did, but despite my choices. This tells me that I probably am no better a guesser about what will make me happy today than I ever was. How much less capable must I be of knowing what will make the nation, or the world, happy.
Seems silly, then, to try to force it.
Yet? Humanity continues to try.
A function of age, when the memory remains intact, is experience and seeing the same patterns repeat again and again as history unfolds. How many times, I wonder, have I seen a group of people go mad—convinced that if they can only jail, or destroy, or kill the right people everything will then be fine? The Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. The Sandinistas in Nicaragua. The Burmese Coup in 1962. The Algerian Coup. The Afghanistan Coup. Rwanda. Ethiopia. Sudan. South Africa. The KKK, here in the states. The Weather Underground. Leaders here and elsewhere deciding that this idea or that is too dangerous, this or that person must die. I can’t count the times this story has played out, just in my lifetime and while I was paying attention, even in a half-assed manner. All just people, like you and I, driven mad by the silly, tiny pattern they embraced.
There is nothing new about this, either. History is replete with examples.
The proof of their madness is right in front of us. Did any of these violent paroxysms end suffering? Poverty? Oppression? Nope. These narratives, sold as truth at the time, killed a lot of people and ruined a lot of lives, and then those involved (convinced they had fought on the side of the angels) sank into the tar pit of history. The problems remain, and their narratives sank with them.
So I will not be incited. I won’t be sucked into anyone’s madness. I will not pretend to believe that I, or anyone else, has a magic window on the future. Trump is not Hitler. Democracy is not at stake. That is hooey.
Tomorrow will arrive, whatever I think of it, and people will still be as flawed as they have ever been. In whatever they perceive as their best interest, people will continue to do mental gymnastics to justify their actions, be it shoplifting, jumping borders, silencing their critics, spying on their neighbors, or flat out lying. We are great at inventing patterns and believing they are important--more important, even, than our own happiness and peace of mind.
That no longer works for me, though. It isn’t enough, I have found, to hide in the delusions of a mob or to soothe my conscious with an ideology or philosophy. It is the simple choices I make, every day, that actually matter. Was I selfish, or dishonest, mean, or self-serving? Did I compromise my own values to grease the tracks, to gain advantage or save something I was afraid of losing?
It is never worth it. The lies I tell myself are a poor substitute for a meaningful life. The future is undiscovered, and my history is a story told by an unreliable narrator, but I have today to be either my best or my worst, and this is true of everyone. I don’t need a narrative to know and do this much. Not mine, not yours, and certainly not theirs. Today is enough.
Peace.
I tell my kids the real barometer for good decision making is will your choice give or get peace in the “now”. Yesterday is beyond change and we can’t even guarantee our appearance tomorrow. Peace in the now is all we’re needing to get to. Took some life to get there. I think I picked it up from a minstrel of our era named Harrison. Well said brother, greetings.