What Makes A Meaningful Life?

"Wonder - is not precisely Knowing." Emily Dickinson

(art by Arlene Graston)

As I am nearing another rotation around the sun, another year in my life beginning, I find myself contemplating and wondering what makes a meaningful life? What do I truly want for my life? What will I do with the time I have left given to me? I do not believe meaning can be found. Instead, meaning is something we make. It is not an easy task in a world that is prone to despair and destruction. How does one transform that despair into love, into hope, into meaning? What makes life worth the living?

Neurologist and author Oliver Sacks wrote in a letter, “I think ‘the meaning of life’ is something we have to formulate for ourselves, we have to determine what has meaning for us… It clearly has to do with love — what and whom and how one can love.”

Certainly the most wondrous thing two humans can do is find the intimacy of connection. To understand another, even in a small way, to be fully present to them and say, "Me, too," is no less incredible, no less infinite than the universe. It is a sacred and holy act. The philosopher Simone Weil, whose writing I often turn to, wrote in her book Gravity and Grace, “Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.” Why is that? Because it is so rare in our culture were we constantly crave attention (social media with its likes and shares consuming us) and how little do we offer our attention - our full and complete attention - to another? Weil continues, “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.”