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Why Begin?

Why does anyone begin a quest for meaning—especially when many of the people around us seem to be oblivious to this search? There are at least 3 reasons I can think of that seem to lie at the heart of such a quest:

A.  A Growing Uneasiness

When we are young, there is a natural force that propels us out into life—a force that sends us out to

          find a good relationship

          get a good job

          experience the adventures of life

          attain financial security

          create a family

There is also a drive in us to test our skills and abilities in the world, to see what we are good at, to see what we can do well. Most of us have a natural drive to achieve something, build something, be “somebody.” This force or drive is partly innate, and partly taught to us by our culture, and it seems to be present in most human beings.

This force can carry us through our lives for a long time—10 years, 20 years, perhaps 40 or 50 years. And at any given moment in our lives, most of those around us are immersed in pursuing one or the other of the goals associated with these drives—and thus are mostly oblivious to questions of a deeper meaning.

But at some point, for some of us, a gnawing uneasiness starts to creep around the edges of our lives, and we begin to come face to face with the question in the old song, Is That All There Is? This can happen when some of the initial goals have been fulfilled, or it can happen when some of those goals have been let go—perhaps out of choice, perhaps because we have discovered they were the wrong goals to begin with, or perhaps because we find that we have failed in our attempt to achieve them. When we begin to discover that the old goals just do not have the same energy behind them anymore, or we discover that their achievement is just not open to us, we start to make our peace with this new reality, and another question becomes increasingly demanding: “What Now?”

At such a time, we might begin to see that we have been operating  from old patterns that no longer have life in them, or we might begin to realize that the goals we had set earlier just don’t fit us anymore. Perhaps we even begin to see that our goals and ambitions were borrowed from influential others, and did not truly spring from a deep level in our own nature to begin with.

When any of these things occur, we might begin to ask in earnest: Is my life just about making a living, or about buying more things—a bigger house, a more expensive car, a bigger and better TV screen? Is the purpose of my life to have one more experience, or to mark one more activity off the endless “To Do” list? Is the real measure of my life: Career? Money? A Nice House?  A Great Car? One more Interesting Trip? Another Romance? The Continuing Attempt to be Rich and Famous?

No matter how much success one has had, or how little, this feeling, these questions can begin to arise. No matter whether those around you are asking such questions, you may begin to find yourself wrestling with just these issues—whether you like it or not. At some point, the old drives and ambitions of your everyday world start to seem flat, stale, dry, or empty, and you find yourself grappling with very different questions indeed.

This does not seem to be true for everyone, but if this feeling of uneasiness begins to arise in you, then perhaps you are ready to begin your own Quest for Meaning.

B.  A Feeling of Despair

But whatever the reasons, modern culture does seem to have created a great deal of despair. But if you at times feel despair, do not despair of that! Most people in the age of modernity feel it at times. In fact, despair has a venerable history. The great Danish philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard, observed that despair is the essence of the modern human condition. He concluded that there are only two types of people—those who realize they are in despair, and those who are in despair but don't know that they are. And for him, those who are in despair but don’t know it are in the least desirable position—because they can’t begin to do anything about their despair. They have hidden it even from themselves.

William James, arguably America’s greatest philosopher (and greatest psychologist as well), concluded that most of those people throughout history who had reached a high state of emotional and spiritual maturity, and a high sense of well-being, went through a stage he called the “sick soul,” where they questioned all that they had formerly believed, and felt little solace from the old answers that had worked for ehm in the past. They often went through a state filled with despair before the breakthrough into a higher state of well-being.

The German mystic Johannes Tauler describes a state in a very advanced spiritual journey where the seeker is “ left so completely on his own that he knows nothing at all of God; he is brought to such desolation that he wonders whether he was ever on the right path.”

And Swiss psychologist Carl Jung observed that “A psychoneurosis must be understood, ultimately, as the suffering of a soul that has not discovered its meaning.” How would it affect our lives, and our culture, if we began to think of our neuroses as a call to find greater meaning in our lives, rather than as something to be hidden, avoided—or as something that could or should be “fixed.”

In light of this guidance, and similar guidance from wise beings throughout the ages, it would be safe to conclude that discovering and acknowledging our despair can be an essential step in finding and living a healthier, more complete, more fulfilling life. Despair is often the compelling sign that our lives need to change, and it can be the motivation that propels us off on the search for new answers to the questions about life and its meaning. So if you are feeling a touch of despair, don’t despair. It might just be your wake-up call to the journey toward a more complete, whole, and fulfilled life.

C.  Hope 

The third powerful reason from which an inner journey can arise is hope. If, somewhere inside, you sense that there just might be something more to life than you have found to this point, if you begin to feel that there could be a richer, deeper meaning than you have discovered to date, then out of this sense of hopefulness, you might begin a more active search for your own direct experience of this deeper meaning.

Certainly many, many individuals throughout human history—many of whom have undergone great difficulties and great struggles—have declared that they eventually found a sense of meaning in their lives, a place of serenity and peace, even a deep sense of joy. If we look at extreme examples of those who suffered long imprisonments, terrible deprivation—even severe abuse—even among these we find many who eventually found a sense of meaning, a final experience of love and peace and joy.