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2 two statements 3 notions 4 what you might like to do 3 notions Making sense of life, trying to understand and apply meaning, a story, stories, to the events of life, is a continual process. At least it is for me. It is also one I cannot avoid. Is it for you? The possibility that life does not make any sense/ has no purpose has contained me, in the past. I tried atheism. I tried agnosticism. Atheism for a few months; agnosticism for a decade plus. Neither forever stuck. Other people make them work; one such person is a cohost on a LukeyoutheU podcast series. I find imitable aspects in their living of life. I myself simply cannot but believe there is meaning to life. There has to be, is for me, sense in life, including but also certainly beyond only physical, biological existence (which is itself no small thing). That is what I come to/ decided to believe. The story I tell myself. Belief is probably the point: I believe that life makes sense, and so I find, and surround myself with, and probably create, evidence that it does. Would not things elsewise fly apart? Would not we otherwise, at least many of us, go insane? Rhetorical questions, I know; from them. though, you can see where I stand. And stand I do. For those who believe there is no sense in life, that it just happens; that it is/ we are but accidents, only the current-but-temporary leaders in the species-development game; and/ or believe that life is in large part unexplainable and destined to remain so; and/ or believe humanity will at some point know all there is worth knowing; well, that is the life they will likely live/ experience. It is the story they tell themselves and believe. I am not saying they are wrong, or what they believe is untrue. I am saying that what we believe is what we often, in my experience, but perhaps not always, get. For those who think that there could be or is sense in life, albeit a meaning known or not yet known, I say to you, I believe, that there is even more than that. More sense in the world than we know or could possibly imagine. My belief is not that the world is devoid of sense or meaning but rather soaked with it. That it is up to us, if we so choose, to see what we can of it. To create even more. Far greater in number and extent than things that do not work, that are what we consider are bad, or are bad, in this world, are things which do, and are, good. In clearer, actionable words: look for good and you will find it. This does not mean that the less good, or the bad, the evil, does not also exist. This understanding, this story of life, this sense of life that I keep coming back to, that I keep reminding myself to come back, cannot but come back to, which I find all roads leading to, is not a prepackaged, easy idea. It is not easy to explain, so far as I have yet found; not easy to get across. I cannot pack it into one memorable sentence. Into one repeatable story. Into three words. It is, instead, a grand vision. A not-completely-holdable-in-one's-mind idea. It is an appreciation of variation and order; variance and norms; nuance and clarity. Life, when looked at, hoped, hopped into, is more than complex: it is all. All its parts are connected by one throughway, avenue, street, path, string, thought or another. The question for me is: how can I express/ present/ speak of what I think the sense of life is? LukeyoutheU is my response. It is my good faith effort to answer the question. It is, I hope, a full thing; and getting fuller. LyU's website has many pages; LyU has books; LyU's podcasts have six series, all divergent understandings of life which also all make sense to me. Though the stories throughout all of LyU are different, ranging even so far as from expressed belief to nonbelief; though some are experiential, some biblical or religious, some touching on history; they are all, essentially and eventually, about only one thing. That thing is Life. Life alone, the full-on living of it, is what makes sense to me. Makes sense in the sometimes, sometimes often, actually bonkers, world. 1 a comment 2 two statements 3 notions 4 what you might like to do some more |
