Grappling with thoughts on meaning and purpose through the lens of a dad
Photo by Ryan Unger… out exploring the remote corners of the earth and climbing mountains.
One morning on the way to school my daughter Clare wanted to play a rhyming game.
“Daddy, I’ll say a word and then we have to think of words that rhyme. Okay? I’ll go first…. Apple”.
“hmm?” I responded with a drawn out blank nothing. Had she stumped me on the first one? My time had apparently ran out as she jumped back in with her own answer. “I know, Grapple,” she said confidently.
“Nicely done, Clare.” I said
“I don’t even know what it means though” she said with a little bashfulness in her voice.
“Well it means to struggle or wrestle with something or someone”. I said.
“For instance you could grapple with a person in a fight or you could grapple or wrestle with a decision. Like when you had a hard time deciding on what restaurant you wanted to eat at last week.”
I could tell she was processing what I said as she sat there and it got me thinking about the thoughts I grapple with. The thought that came to mind for me almost immediately was about the nature of being. What is the meaning of life? Why am I here on this earth? What is my purpose?
Some days I think I figure it out and others I fear I’m having an existential crisis. For instance, I feel comforted by the thought that the meaning of life is simply to discover - “life is all about the journey and not the destination” type of sentiment. Other days I take a more nihilistic approach and think what does any of it matter. We are on a rock spinning through space at incredible speeds, rotating endlessly around a star that will one day burn out and explode, in a galaxy where we are nothing but a spec in the scale of the cosmos. Then I think about how that doesn't have to be a negative and can in fact be looked at as a positive - that there are no rules to life and that anything is possible because all we are is on a ball floating through nothing… and then I circle back to a mindset where I’ll likely never have answers and only more questions the more I think about it, so why even bother with the thought in the first place. The point being that I grapple with myself. Like imaginary arguments in the shower, I go back and forth with me on my place in life.
In his book Man’s Search for Meaning, the Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist Viktor Frankl writes a deeply profound essay on the analysis of existentialism from the experience of having spent a number of years in Nazi concentration camp during World War II. Not only is he apt to explore the questions in deep analytical and academic form because of his profession but to have lived an experience such as that can only shape a perspective about the meaning of life, in a way that lands on real truths even if they aren't absolute.
Frankl writes that “when man cannot find meaning, he numbs himself with pleasure”. In the essay he describes the moments when prisoners would finally break and give up. They would smoke their own cigarettes as a sort of final act. Cigarettes were used as currency in the camps and so when a man took the only thing of value that he had left and extinguished it in a terminal moment of pleasure, it was a sign that they had no fight left in them, or nothing left to live for. Life truly no longer had any meaning.
This of course is an extremely heavy and dismal illustration of the far end of hopelessness. I am incredibly fortunate to have not had to come face to face with these moments or realizations through the experience of a holocaust and internment camp. Rather, I am grateful that I get to wrestle with these thoughts through a lens of immense love and great pride.
For myself this is important as a father because I am constantly reminded of my own existence by seeing living, breathing products of my existence on a daily basis. The drive to help them discover who they are and what life means to them is a challenge and a duty that I can’t escape and so in one fleeting moment it can be crystal clear that they are the meaning of life for me. But then I also quickly recognize that there is more to my own personal life than my kids. Raising them is integral to who I am but also only a slice of the pie. Again, I continue to grapple…
“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves” - Victor Frankl
Life is a continual process of circumstances out of our control, so the challenge to change ourselves is an ever present one where we must continually embrace our own evolution as individuals. This isn’t the answer to what is the meaning of life? but it is rather an insight on the importance of a renewed discovery of ourselves, which can then put us on a path to where we have direction or a reawakened sense of purpose.
When I dropped Clare off at school she kissed me and ran off to the table of friends in her cafeteria. I stopped at the door and looked back just admiring her from a distance.
“My god she is so grown up.” I thought. Watching her interact with the other kids, smiling big and laughing at some joke another boy said. I noticed how happy she looked.
She paused and looked over at me staring and gave me the sweetest wave. She wasn't embarrassed that her dad was still there watching her and gave a final acknowledgement and smile that said, “I’m okay daddy, I love you”.
I walked out of the school doors into the morning sun. The sweet smell of spring was starting to set the stage for the season to come. Thinking back to her little wave I felt alive and once again thought about what it means to be a dad and what's important.
The meaning of life tends to evolve. My reason for being is not the same now as it was a decade ago. So what will it look like when I’m 50 or 100? What if I live to be 120 years old? How will I approach the question of the meaning of life? In that time frame I’m certain to have many instances in which I cannot change my situation and so I will be challenged to change myself resulting in a new me and likely a renewed sense of meaning.
When I do make progress in my quest for purpose, it is rarely a conscious or cerebral one and instead something felt or an intuition and gives me a sense of peace; it is a feeling that my place in life has meaning even if I’m not always able to put my finger on what that is exactly.
Frankl notes in his essay that “challenging the meaning of life is the truest expression of the state of being human”.
I think one can argue that humans are small and insignificant on a galactic scale. Yet we have this ability to continually transcend the limits of our nature through discovery. I believe that when we look inward and grapple with these questions the discomfort gives light to a higher understanding and the scale of the universe becomes more balanced where our small size in the universe is not equal to our place in it.
As a parent I am privileged to get to experience moments like this with my daughter where her little wave and smile is like life giving me a hug. Through her I can feel that there is some sort of meaning to life even if I don’t fully understand what it is. A love so big in a universe where we are so tiny. My girls are living reminders of it and help me discover that it may not be about knowing and rather be about living.
