“The meaning of life is just to be alive. It
is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a
great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.” -Alan Watts
Nothing
rattles my therapeutic nerves more than meeting with someone who has passed the
50 mark and presents with the existential dilemma of needing to, "Find meaning
in my life." I have actually been in
counseling session with elders in their 70s and 80s who were lamenting that
their lives lacked a sense of purpose. I
have been known to go on extended rants on this topic during public speaking
events that were only tangentially related to aging. That’s how much this issue both frustrates me
and breaks my heart.
Upon
reflection, I’ve realized that my reflexive gag response to someone telling me that his or her life lacks meaning is that this “realization” in most cases has not
arisen from an inner-calling but to the shouts and shrieks of a youth-addicted
culture. It has become an accepted edict
in our society to tell our aging citizens that despite their years of
accomplishments, struggles, triumphs and tragedies, if they want to age well
(whatever the hell that means) they need to find a new purpose their lives. This has even gone so far as to tell folks
who were finally able to walk away from the stress-filled work-a-day world that
it is in their best interest to un-retire so as to contribute to the social
order. (I can feel my fingers tensing up
even as I write about this.)
Does it
strike anyone else as ironic that the purpose-driven life is supposed to bring
about some form of peace of mind? In
most cases, any phrase with the word “driven” attached to it portends something
menacing, even deadly. We are driven insane, driven to distraction, driven
to tears, and driven to drink. Then,
in the end, driven to our final
resting place by a big long black car that, for the first and last time in our
lives, is allowed to run red lights;
whoo-hoo!
This
would be only mildly annoying if it were not for the fact that this drive to find
meaning leaves so many aging people feeling depressed to the point of giving up
on life. This is where I draw the line
and call BS on the whole “Your life only matters in you know what its purpose
is.”
Let’s be
honest, if you ask 100 people what is the purpose of life you will get 100
different answers, and at least 75 of those are going to make you sorry you
even asked. Now, let’s imagine that you
have, throughout the course of fifty-plus years of dragging your skin suit
around the planet, come up with something that makes sense to you. Not only does it give your life meaning, it
allows you to sleep at night without worrying that either the morality, or actual,
police are going to break down your door at night and charge you with sins
against humanity. Then, just as you’re
set to relax into your golden years, along comes a professional advice giver to
tarnish those years by telling you that you’ve got it all wrong. Using threats of hellfire, predictions of permanent states of hopelessness, and/or levels of guilt that would make the
Inquisition look like the Oprah Show, these sages of old age eventually
convince you that you need to use your remaining time to become worthy of
whatever is coming next.
Is it
any wonder that the mass of humanity is running around frantically trying “to
achieve something beyond themselves?”
Should we be surprised that when fear is the primary motivator, the
first causality is love? Rather than
acts of cooperation and compassion we get desperation and despair. Rather than inclusion we get isolation and
far too many of us trade in becoming old and wise for old and worried.
I have
found throughout my psychotherapy practice that I can have an immediate impact
on someone’s angst that they’re aging incorrectly because they don’t know their
purpose by simply telling them the following; You are life’s
purpose! (Sometimes I even add the
exclamation point by drawing the image on their forehead making sure that the
period lands right between their eyes.
This of course is a dramatic statement and I would never really attempt
to draw anything on my clients even if I thought it would snap them out of
their hypnotic trance of feeling separate from life.)
Now you
might ask, "Who is he to tell anyone that they’re life’s purpose? How does he know?" I can only answer that with the following
Taoist story by the enigmatic Chuang Tzu:
One
day Chuang Tzu and a friend were walking by a river. "Look at the fish
swimming about," said Chuang Tzu, "They are really enjoying
themselves."
"You
are not a fish," replied the friend, "So you can't truly know that
they are enjoying themselves."
"You
are not me," said Chuang Tzu. "So how do you know that I do not know
that the fish are enjoying themselves?"
That, by
the way, is the Taoist version of “nanny nanny boo boo.”
In
essence, all I’m doing is reminding them of something they already know but have
been systematically trained to ignore.
The tension relieved is palpable and the smiles are priceless. For those few who struggle against even being
given back their birthright of fulfilling their purpose by simply being, I
offer the following:
By all means continue on in your search for
purpose, look under every rock, turn over every stone, and exhaust both body
and mind. All I ask is that you consider the very search itself as your purpose, and then come back and see me so
I can do that exclamation point thing on your forehead.
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