Strange how we so often think it is silly to ask the question, "what is the meaning of life?" Since I started shooting
Fierce Light: When Spirit Meets Action, I ask everyone I interview that question - from people on the street, to luminaries like Arch Bishop Desmond Tutu. The initial response is often surprise, laughter, and then - holy cow, he's serious. Some just launch right in, as it is a question they have asked themselves very often. Others might pause for a long time, and then respond. But always, they respond. I clarify the question, by saying, what I mean is, "what is the meaning of life - for you." It is different for each and every one of us, but I feel it's high time we got comfortable asking ourselves that question. Of course, it might change - perhaps it will change for you every day.
Let's see-let me ask my Self that question right now, and see what comes out.
"Self, what is the meaning of life, for you, right now?"
"To Love. Always, it begins with love. To give Love, and to receive Love. To receive the vastness of love which is the undercurrent of this universe. To give back all the love I can, in awe and reverence, to the incredible web of life that I am part of."
I know - the cynics among us always say, how can this be a loving universe, when there is so much suffering, so much pain? Where there is pain, where there is suffering, there is also compassion - there is always, everywhere, room for love. For the greatest of love.
When have I loved the very most in my life? When suffering came right home, to my family - a few years back, when my brother Randy was dying of cancer. He was one of those beautiful souls to whom cancer stripped away all that was unessential, all that he was not. As he wasted away, to a shadow of who he used to be, it was as if all that was left of him was love. And my family, all of us, who cared for him, and supported him, we both bathed in his radiance and we bathed him in radiance.
When my time is up, I wish that I might rise to that same depth of loving that he did. So yes, the meaning of life for me is to love, with all my heart.
From there, all else will follow.
If there is one thing I learned from shooting
Scared Sacred , it's that no matter what is going on, there is always a flower to found, at the very least, a single flower, poking from the ashes. I have found much meaning in my life by searching the ruins for those flowers. Don't get my wrong: I am not celebrating suffering! My whole life is dedicated to helping reduce the unnecessary, man made suffering of this world, in my role as a media activist. Firm in the belief that world peace is not only possible, but inevitable.
I find the meaning of my life in times of abundance too, when I can celebrate unreservedly. I once asked the great theologian and environmental activist,
Father Thomas Berry what is the role of the human, and he said, "the human is that being in whom the universe reflects on, and celebrates itself,and it's
numinous orgins, in a special mode of conscious self awareness. So the role of the human, is to celebrate."
How dare we celebrate, when the world is at war? Well, it may not be the meaning of life for all of us, all the time, as I said - the answer to that question is a diverse as there are fingerprints. But for those of us with the positivity gene built in, like I have, perhaps we can be a source of kindling for the fires of celebration, celebrating and feeding the tiny sparks of hope that are to be found beyond the vale of tears, even when a beloved brother is dying or fellow humans are being bombed.
I found those tiny embers everywhere I went in my five year pilgrimage to the ground zero's of the world, from Afghanistan, to Cambodia, to Palestine, to New York City during 9.11, everywhere, the fierce glowing embers of hope refuses to be extinguished. One survivor of that horrible blast, in HIroshima, Tamka Hari, wrote:
"Lost in the shifting sand
In the midst of a crumbling world
The vision of one flower."
So there is meaning to be found, everywhere, absolutely everywhere. It just takes tremendous courage to find it. By no means does this mean slapping on a grin, bucking up, and facing the world with a stiff upper lip. Meaning is found in the depths of despair, meaning is found in the heights of ecstasy. But meaning is what makes life worth living.
Viktor Frankl, a survivor of the death camps of Auschwitz, and the author of "Man's Search for Meaning", wrote:"We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."
Everything can be taken away from us - and one day, with certainty everything will - but that one freedom. Our ability to choose our own perspective, to choose our own path, to find our own meaning in life.
So how about you? For you, what is the meaning of life?
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