The Meaning of Life (Chapter 7): Meaning and Happiness

Meaning and Happiness

So, if you’re still reading this I have to assume that you are at least not dismissing out of hand the thesis I am putting forward, namely, that neither science nor religion nor philosophy can provide you with a “pre-packaged” meaning in life and that life per se is apparently meaningless, but that we can and should impose meaning on our own individual lives.

But if we do (impose meaning on our own life) will that make us happy? – because, surely, the goal of everyone is to be happy.

Instead of asking people I meet, “How are you?”, I have an annoying habit of asking them, “Are you happy?” If someone replies that the question is meaningless, I take that as a “No”. Similarly, people who have to think about the question for a while are definitely in the “Probably Not” category. People who are happy are usually aware of the fact. I asked one of my nieces last week: “Are you happy?”. She answered immediately: “Very. For the first time in my life I know who I am and I like that person”. Now there’s a “Yes”!

So what is the relationship between meaning in your life and being happy?

Frankl has the answer:

He agrees that we all want to be happy but he says that the pursuit of happiness directly is self-defeating. Happiness cannot be pursued – the American constitution notwithstanding! – it must ensue. Happiness, he says, ensues when we have meaning in our lives. To quote Frankl, happiness ensues “…as the unintended side-effect of one’s dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself…”.

He says that the only way you can find happiness is to first find a reason to be happy, e.g., loving another person (experiential value) or doing something good (creative value). Having found a reason to be happy, happiness ensues.

Frankl says that the reason why Freud’s so-called Pleasure Principle (“the will to pleasure”) makes no sense is because the more one aims at pleasure, the more his aim is missed. To quote Frankl: “To the extent one makes happiness the object of his motivation, he necessarily makes it the object of his attention. But precisely by so doing he loses sight of the reason for happiness, and happiness itself must fade away.” He goes further and says that this self-defeating quality of pleasure-seeking accounts for “….many sexual neuroses because both orgasm and potency are impaired by being made the target of intention” (that is, trying to reach orgasm impairs reaching orgasm in the same way that trying to fall asleep keeps you awake).

As if to prove Frankl’s point, on Oprah today there was a guy who had tickets to last year’s Chicago White Sox World Series (pleasure) but when he heard about the Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans, he organized a drive for donations in his Chicago area, sold the World Series tickets on eBay and used the money raised from the sale of the tickets to drive to New Orleans with all the stuff that he had collected (meaning). He claims to have no regrets. He says he was happier than he would have been at the baseball games.

So where does that leave me? Remember in the preface I wrote: “…my search for meaning in life continues and writing this tract may contribute to that search”.

Did it?

Writing this has made things much clearer. I guess it confirms what I already strongly suspected – that life means whatever we decide it means. What surprised me, however, was the amazing consensus reached by so many great writers: That Love and Work are the meaning of life for most people. Just look at the Quotations chapter. See how many quote love and work as the meaning of life. Remember Freud’s answer to the question: What should a normal person be able to do well? Freud said: “Lieben und arbeiten” (to love and to work). Remember Viktor Frankl’s advice on where to find meaning: Experiential Values (Love) and Creative Values (Work). Look at the Addison quote: “three grand essentials: something to do (creative value), something to love (experiential value), and something to hope for (attitudinal value, viz., hopefulness).”

As for myself, I am happy because my life has meaning and my life has meaning because of (1) my love for Anne as well as for many family members and friends and (2) my work – which includes writing – even writing this pamphlet, my teaching at the university, even my cooking. And I look forward to many things – a month in France, writing fiction, another grandchild.

But I must admit that my knees still shake and I feel weak when I contemplate disappearing suddenly from the face of the earth, unaware that I ever lived, to survive only in the memory of people who knew me. It is not enough.

The Meaning of Life (Chapter 6): Quotations

Quotations

Scientists, theologians and philosophers are not the only thinkers to write about the meaning of human life. Many poets, novelists and other artists have addressed this issue as well and their wisdom adds another dimension to the topic. The great novelists in particular have a lot to say about what is most meaningful to human beings and how one should live. As a psychologist, I have learned at least as much – and perhaps more – about human nature from reading the great novels than I have from studying psychology textbooks. Leo Tolstoy’s insights into human motivation in (what I think) is the greatest novel ever written, “Anna Karenina”, are extraordinary. In this chapter I have collected quotes that address meaning in life. My search was certainly not exhaustive and I was selective about which quotes to include). I have clustered them underFrankl’s three values where he says meaning can be found.

Experiential Values

For many people, the experience that gave their life meaning was a religious or spiritual experience but, by far, the most commonly cited experiential “meaning of life” in the quotations that I have come across is Love. Here are some examples:

• “There is the land of the living and the land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only meaning, the only survival.”
(The last sentence of Thornton Wilder’ novel, “The Bridge of San Luis Rey”)

• The novelist, George Sand (her real name was Amandine Aurore Lucile Dupin Baronet Dudevant), in a letter, wrote: “There is only one happiness in life, to love and be loved”.

• “In our life there is a single color, as on an artist’s palette, which provides the meaning of life and art. It is the color of love”, wrote the painter, Marc Chagall

• Viktor Frankl wrote the following while being marched to forced labor in a Nazi concentration camp:
“………That brought thoughts of my own wife to mind. And as we stumbled on for miles, slipping on icy spots, supporting each other time and again, dragging one another on and upward, nothing was said, but we both knew: each of us was thinking of his wife. Occasionally I looked at the sky, where the stars were fading and the pink light of the morning was beginning to spread behind a dark bank of clouds. But my mind clung to my wife’s image, imagining it with an uncanny acuteness. I heard her answering me, saw her smile, her frank and encouraging look. Real or not, her look then was more luminous than the sun which was beginning to rise.

A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth–that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world may still know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved………”
• “…Love stands opposed to death – it alone, and not reason, is stronger than death…” (from the epic 1924 novel, “The Magic Mountain”, by the German Nobel laureate, Thomas Mann)

• I recently read Ian McEwan’s novel “Saturday” and was surprised and pleased when the hero recites one of my favorite poems, Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach”, from memory in an attempt to impress the violent home invaders with “his daughter’s” poetry:
“Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! For the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.”

Creative Values

The second most common meaning in life found in literature is doing something that is meaningful. It can be simply doing a job really well or it can be doing something charitable. For Shakespeare it was writing plays and sonnets, for Mozart it was writing operas and symphonic music. The psychoanalyst Erik Erikson refers to this kind of meaningful activity as “Generativity” and he says that most people discover this meaning by producing and raising children. I remember, when writing my autobiography, deriving satisfaction from imaging my only grandchild, now five years of age, reading it and getting to know about her great, great grandmother (my beloved maternal grandmother) by reading what I wrote. It’s as close to immortality as we can get2

• Dorothea, a “Mother Theresa” type character in George Eliot’s (real name: Mary Anne Evans) novel, “Middlemarch”, makes it sound obvious that doing good works is the only meaning of life: “What do we live for if it is not to make life less difficult to each other?”
In the Finale of the novel, the author, summing things up, says: “…the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”

• Levin, in Leo Tolstoy’s novel, “Anna Karenina”, is one of the most sympathetic characters in all of literature. He agonizes over the meaning of life, searching philosophic and theological texts for answers. But for a man who does not know why he lives, he doesn’t hesitate to rush to the deathbed of his brother when he learns of his brother’s terminal illness and there he cares for his brother until his death. Back home, when he resumes his academic search for the meaning of life, his wife points out to her husband that his recent behavior toward his brother may indicate that he already knows what the meaning of life is. In the last words of the novel, Levin says: “…my whole life, independently of anything that may happen to me, is every moment of it no longer meaningless as it was before, but has an unquestionable meaning of goodness with which I have the power to invest it.”

• In his 17th century novel, “Candide”, Voltaire has the heroine say: “Il faut cultiver notre jardin.” [We must cultivate our garden.]” “Our garden”, of course, is a metaphor for our life’s work.

• “She heard him chuckling, and after a while he said, ‘Dagny, there’s nothing of any importance in life – except how well you do your work. Nothing. Only that. Whatever else you are, will come from that. It’s the only measure of human value’” (from the novel, “Atlas Shrugged” by Ayn Rand)

• “Life has no meaning unless one lives it with a will, at least to the limit of one’s will. Virtue, good, evil are nothing but words unless one takes them apart in order to build something with them; they do not win their true meaning until one knows how to apply them.”
(Paul Gauguin, French artist)

• “This is our purpose: to make life as meaningful as possible, this life that has been bestowed upon us; to live in such a way that we may be proud of ourselves; to act in such a way that some part of us lives on.” (Oswald Spengler, German historian)

• Dedicate some part of your life to others. Your dedication will not be a sacrifice. It will be an exhilarating experience because it is an intense effort applied toward a meaningful end.” (Dr. Tom Dooley, humanitarian and physician in the U.S. Navy)

Attitudinal Values

Attitudinal values do not necessarily involve an experiential value (which, to quote Frankl, means “experiencing something – such as goodness, truth and beauty or, last but not least, by experiencing another human being in his very uniqueness”). Nor do attitudinal values involve doing something (creative values). Rather attitudinal values involve, again to quote Frankl, “…rising above ourselves and growing beyond ourselves, in a word by changing ourselves…to see in life’s transitoriness an incentive to take responsible action.” Examples are compassion, bravery or a good sense of humor.

One meaning in life that derives from an attitudinal value and that crops up in several places is the attitude of striving to become all that you are capable of becoming. Abraham Maslow, the father of Humanistic Psychology called this Self-Actualization.

• Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher and theologian wrote that we should “… venture wholly to be oneself as an individual.” He also said: “Be that self which one truly is.”

• In Hamlet (Act III, Scene 1), Shakespeare says something similar: “This above all: to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, that thou then canst be false to any man.”

• But the best expression of this meaning of life, derived from an attitudinal value can be found in Saul Bellow’s “The Adventures of Augie March” (which British novelist, Martin Amis, describes as the best American novel ever written):

“…you will understand, Mr. Mintouchian, if I tell you that I have always tried to become what I am. But it’s a frightening thing. Because what if what I am by nature isn’t good enough?” I was close to tears as I said it to him. “I suppose I better, anyway, give in and be it………………”It is better to die what you are than to live a stranger forever,” he (Augie) said.” Unfortunately, poor Augie never achieved this.

Of course there is no reason why one cannot impose more than one meaning on one’s life. Here is a quote I came across recently that says it all. These words were written by Joseph Addison, a British politician, playwright and essayist (1672-1719):

“Three grand essentials in this life are something to do, something to love, and
something to hope for.”

The Meaning of Life (Chapter 5): Where to find meaning

So, if you agree with the Existentialists that we live in an indifferent, objective, often ambiguous, and “absurd” universe in which meaning is not provided by the natural order, but rather can be created, however provisionally and unstably, by human beings’ actions and interpretations, then where are we to find this meaning?

Frankl says that are there are three kinds of values that can give meaning to your life:
•    The first kind of value is experiential.  Frankl describes an experiential value this way: “experiencing something – such as goodness, truth and beauty – by experiencing nature and culture or, last but not least, by experiencing another human being in his very uniqueness – by loving him.”  Judging from the quotations cited in the next chapter, loving another person is probably the most common example of finding meaning through an experiential value.  For me personally, meeting Anne and loving Anne, is what gave my life meaning.  Before I met her I was a basket case – anxious, penniless, drinking and smoking heavily, fat and out of shape, very unhappy.  I met her in the fall of 1966 and my life changed dramatically.  I can remember that time of my life as if it was yesterday.  I was suddenly more alive than I’d ever been before.  Everything seemed bright and new again.  I saw trees and clouds for the first time.  They looked so beautiful.  Strange that I had never noticed them before.  The starry night, snow falling softly, the feel of sunshine on my face, all these could now make my heart leap up.  Where had I been?  How could these magnificent experiences have failed to impress me till now?  I wrote poetry day and night.  I couldn’t help myself.  On Monday, January 30th, 1967, three days after our first date, I wrote:

I used to think the earth was just a sphere of soil
And the sun a molten mass of burning gas.

Then I met her.

Now I know the earth is but a carpet for her feet
And the sun comes up to wake her and bring her to me.

The trees were tall and leafy – useless pretty things to see
And the moon was just a mirror for the sun.

Then she came to me.
And now I know the trees are just umbrellas to keep the April rain from off her forehead
And the moon’s glow plays upon the softness of her face to
make me want to touch her cheek.

And life before I knew her was just an endless empty curse
And a woman was a pretty thing that wore a dress.

But now I love her

And life now seems a precious gift, a gift of time, a time to love
And a woman is a girl called Anne,
A fragile, tender, lovely child of God
Whose goodness broke upon me
Like an unexpected shower from the summer skies,
Whose tenderness o’erwhelmed me
Like a sudden gust of wind that catches breath and waters eyes.

In the “Acknowledgements” section of my Ph.D. dissertation I thanked my wife, Anne, “…who helped me make of the works of my every day not a reproach but a song.”
•    A second means of discovering meaning is through creative values, by “doing a deed,” as Frankl puts it.  This is the traditional existential idea of providing oneself with meaning by achievement or accomplishment.  Shakespeare and Mozart come to mind but you need not be a genius to find meaning in work.  Last night I saw a good example in the television coverage of environmentalists washing oil-soaked birds after a tanker spill in a nearby community.  As you will see among the quotations in the next chapter, many heroes and heroines in literature, e.g., Dorothea in Middlemarch and Levin in Anna Karenina, find meaning this way.
In the Globe and Mail last week I saw a perfect example of someone whose meaning in life stemmed from a “creative value”.  He is a 40-year-old Russian mathematician named Grigori Perelman.  I quote the story verbatim:
Reclusive genius poses problem for math award
By James Randerson, London
“He is probably the smartest person on the planet: an enigmatic and reclusive genius who shocked the academic world with his claim to have solved one of the hardest problems in math.  He is tipped to win a ‘math Nobel’ for his work on possible shapes of the universe.  But rumours are rife that the brilliant Russian mathematician will spurn the greatest accolade his peers can bestow.
Since Grigori (Grisha) Perelman revealed his solution in 2002 to a century-old math problem, it has been subjected to unparalleled scrutiny by the best academic minds.  But no one has been able to find a mistake and there is a growing consensus that he has cracked the problem.
So next Tuesday he is tipped to win a Fields Medal.  And upper echelons of the math world are buzzing with rumours that even if he is offered the award, he will not accept it.
He has refused a $1-million (U.S.) prize offered by a private math research institute that would be his if his work is proved correct.
The medals are open to mathematicians less than 40 years old at the beginning of the prize year.  Dr. Perelman turned 40 in June, making this the last year he can win.
He has also refused a major European math prize, supposedly on the grounds that he did not believe the committee awarding the prize was sufficiently qualified to judge his work.
“I just don’t see him turning up in a stretch limo with four overendowed women and waving his cheque in the air.  It’s not his style,” said Jeremy Gray, a math historian at the University of Oxford.
Little is known about Dr. Perelman, who refuses to talk to the news media.  He was born on June 16, 1966, and his prodigious talent led to his early enrolment at a St. Petersburg school specializing in advanced mathematics and physics.
After receiving his Ph.D. from the Saint-Petersburg State University he worked at the Steklov Institute of Mathematics before moving to the United States in the late 1980s to take posts at various universities.  He returned to Steklov 10 years ago to work on his proof of the universe’s shape.
The math world was set humming in 2002 by the first instalment of his groundbreaking work on the problem that was set out by the French mathematician and philosopher Jules Henri Poincaré in 1904.  The conjecture, which is difficult for most non-mathematicians even to understand, exercised some of the greatest minds of the 20th century.
“It’s a central problem in both math and physics because it seeks to understand what the shape of the universe can be,” said Marcus du Sautoy at Oxford University.  “It is very tricky to pin down.  A lot of people have announced false proofs of this thing.”  The obsession with the problem, shared by several great mathematicians, has been dubbed Poincaritis.
Even the way Dr. Perelman announced his proof, which took eight years to complete, was unusual.  Rather than publishing in a peer-reviewed journal, he posted three manuscripts in an on-line archive of math and physics papers.
“He placed the papers on the Web archive and basically said, ‘That’s it,’ ” said Nigel Hitchin, professor of mathematics at Oxford University.  The most recent of the papers fleshing out his proof runs 473 pages.
“If he were to win it and turn it down it would be slightly insulting,” Prof. Du Sautoy said.
But it seems unlikely that Dr. Perelman, who recently relinquished his academic position, will care much about offending his peers.
“He has sort of alienated himself from the math community,” Prof. Du Sautoy added.  “He has become disillusioned with mathematics, which is quite sad.  He’s not interested in money.  The big prize for him is proving his theorem.”
Although this is a perfect example of a creative value providing meaning in a person’s life, it is a rather unusual and rare example.  More common examples of a creative value as the meaning in a person’s life would be rearing a child as the meaning in a mother’s life or training for and running in a marathon as the meaning in a young athlete’s life.
These first two “values” of Frankl (love and work) put me in mind of Freud’s answer to the question: What should a normal person should be able to do well? Freud is reported to have said: “Lieben und arbeiten” (to love and to work).
•    Most important, according to Frankl, is the third avenue: attitudinal values.  “Facing a fate we cannot change, we are called upon to make the best of it by rising above ourselves and growing beyond ourselves, in a word by changing ourselves.  And this equally holds for the three components of the ‘tragic triad’ – pain, guilt and death – inasmuch as we may turn suffering into a human achievement and accomplishment; derive from guilt the opportunity to change for the better; and see in life’s transitoriness an incentive to take responsible action.”
Attitudinal values include such virtues as compassion, bravery or a good sense of humor.  Frankl gives the following example:

A few years after World War II a doctor examined a Jewish woman who wore a bracelet made of baby teeth mounted in gold.  “A beautiful bracelet,” the doctor remarked.  “Yes,” the woman answered, “this tooth belonged to Miriam, this one to Esther, and this one to Samuel….”  She mentioned the names of her daughters and sons according to age.  “Nine children,” she added, “and all of them were taken to the gas chambers.”  Shocked, the doctor asked: “How can you live with such a bracelet?”  Quietly, the Jewish woman replied: “I am now in charge of an orphanage in Israel.”

It is this woman’s attitude toward her suffering that makes her life meaningful.  Again, this is a rather dramatic and unusual example.  A more common example would be an errant father who atones for the way he neglected his children by becoming a supportive and loving grandfather to their children.

Frankl makes it sound like a person’s meaning in life comes from one of these three sources.  Why can’t one’s meaning in life derive from more than one value?  In fact, I often find it difficult, when I hear stories of the meaning in people’s lives, to decide whether that meaning is “experiential”, “creative” or “attitudinal”.  The Jewish woman, with the tooth bracelet, for example.  Is her meaning “attitudinal” or “creative”?  Surely her work in the Israeli orphanage constitutes “doing a deed”, to use Frankl’s phrase, and is therefore a creative value.  I would argue that most “experiential” and “attitudinal” values lead to “doing good” and that these acts, lovingly performed, become another meaning – a “creative” meaning.

The Meaning of Life (Chapter 4):Imposing Meaning on Life

Philosophy: the study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence, and the basis and limits of human understanding. (Oxford English Dictionary)

As I said earlier, the question, “What is the meaning of life?” has several different meanings because the word “meaning” means different things to different people.

Scientists have addressed versions of the question that are within their purview, namely, “What is the origin of life?” and “What is the nature of life and the universe in which we live?”. Those questions, however, are not really ones to which I am searching for answers and, in any case, the answers the scientists have come up with are far from complete.

Theologians are willing to address a question that does interest me, namely, “What is the purpose of life?” but, as you’ve seem, I found little consolation in the variety of contradictory answers that they have proposed.

Another definition of philosophy (besides the one quoted above is “the systematic consideration of the topics that are the greatest concern to mankind” (Merriam-Webster Encyclopaedia), so it is not surprising that some Philosophers are willing to address the questions, “What is valuable in life” and “How should one live?” and those questions are close to what I mean by “the meaning of life”. Many schools of philosophy claim to have answers but, like religion, philosophy offers a variety of contradictory answers to the questions, so that in the end it is really a matter of opinion. Here are some philosophic answers to the questions, “What is valuable in life?” and “How should one live?” (I am not attempting to survey all of the main philosophic positions, in part, because I am not competent to do so and, in part, because some of them are irrelevant to my personal search):

• Socrates, who lived in the fifth century B.C., believed that the best way for people to live was to focus on self-development rather than the pursuit of material wealth. He always invited others to try to concentrate more on friendships and a sense of true community.

• There are several varieties of Pragmatism. The American psychologist, William James, is the most famous Pragmatist. The central tenet of Pragmatism is that the test of a theory, belief or doctrine, must be its effect upon us, its practical consequences — the pragmatic test: whatever works is true. Knowledge is an instrument for the sake of life, existing as practical utility. Truth, therefore, is not useful because it is true; it is true because it is useful. The Pragmatists would say, for example, that belief in God is pragmatically justified if it makes a positive difference in the experience of the believer.

• There are as many definitions of Humanism as there are Humanists. It started in the 14th century with the poet, Petrarch, as a shift away from religion to more secular concerns. There was a revival of interest in Greek and Roman literature. The Humanists believe that the most significant thing in life is the human being. Three Humanist Manifestos (1933, 1973 and 2003) have been published. The newest one is much shorter than the other two, listing six primary beliefs, which echo themes from its predecessors:
o Knowledge of the world is derived by observation, experimentation, and rational analysis.
o Humans are an integral part of nature, the result of unguided evolutionary change.
o Ethical values are derived from human need and interest as tested by experience.
o Life’s fulfillment emerges from individual participation in the service of humane ideals.
o Humans are social by nature and find meaning in relationships.
o Working to benefit society maximizes individual happiness.
Signatories included 21 Nobel laureats.
Sounds very similar to what Socrates was saying fifteen centuries earlier.

• The Existentialists say that although life, per se, is apparently or obviously meaningless, a person can and should impose meaning on his or her own life by making choices. Some of them even suggest where to look for meaning.

I personally find the Existential position the most satisfying (I hesitate to say “true” or “correct” since these philosophic position are so much a matter of belief). But before I tell you more about the relationship between Existentialism and the meaning of life, you need to know something about the philosophic movement called existentialism.

Existentialism

Existentialism n. A philosophy that emphasizes the uniqueness and isolation of the individual experience in a hostile or indifferent universe, regards human existence as unexplainable, and stresses freedom of choice and responsibility for the consequences of one’s acts. (The American Heritage Dictionary)

Existentialism is not a single philosophy but a label for several widely different revolts against traditional philosophy. Most of the living “Existentialists” have repudiated this label, and a bewildered outsider might well conclude that the only thing they have in common is a marked aversion to each other.

A bit of history:

The Danish philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard, who is considered the founder of Existentialism (even though he never actually used the term), lived in the nineteenth century; he died at age 42 in 1855. Kierkegaard argued that life is full of absurdity and the individual must make his or her own values in an indifferent world. For Kierkegaard, people can have meaningful lives if they can commit themselves unconditionally to something (in his case Christianity) or someone – even though by doing so they make themselves very vulnerable. Existentialism became popular in the mid-20th century through the works of the French writer-philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre.

A word on the derivation of the term “existentialism”:

Despite the lack of a consensus on many things, most Existentialists maintain that a person’s subjective experiences (the person’s “existence”) and the interpretation of these subjective experiences is the only reality for a person; it is what determines how a person acts. The opposite of the Existentialists are the Essentialists who maintain that there is a reality (an essence) that underlies and accounts for our actions.

A corollary of the existential assumption that our experience is the only reality is: the only meaning life has is the meaning that we impose on it. And we impose this meaning on life by making choices. Choice is very important in Existentialism. One learns from making choices, and committing to those choices.

Generally, Existentialism tends to view human beings as subjects in an indifferent, objective, often ambiguous, and “absurd” universe in which meaning is not provided by the natural order, but rather can be created, however provisionally and unstably, by human beings’ actions and interpretations.

One of the best descriptions of the Existential view of life – the one I use in my Theories of Personality class when I discuss Rollo May’s theory – is from a Woody Allen movie, one of Allen’s few serious movies, Crimes and Misdemeanors. The movie’s story: The long-time mistress (Angelica Huston) of a wealthy ophthalmologist (Martin Landau) threatens to expose their affair to his wife (Claire Bloom). Desperate, the Landau character seeks advice from both his brother (Jerry Orbach) who has ties to the Mafia, and one of his patients, a rabbi who is going blind (Sam Waterston). His brother suggests that the problem be taken care of “permanently” while the rabbi tells Landau that he should come clean in the eyes of God and take a chance and tell his wife about the affair. Landau doesn’t take any chances – he gets rid of his mistress. Across town, the rabbi’s sister (Joanna Gleason) is suing her loser filmmaker husband (Woody Allen) for divorce. The Allen character is a conscientious artist who makes money-losing documentaries on toxic waste and starvation but he takes on a money-making project: a television segment on his pompous TV producer bother-in-law (Alan Alda). Allen sees the project as a sell-out on his part and agonizes over it but he has no moral qualms about making a move on the television show’s producer (Mia Farrow). Farrow is offended by the idea of a married man (Allen) coming on to her and she retreats and runs into the arms of Allen’s number one enemy. This movie (made in 1989) was Allen’s 19th and, I think, his best. But back to the point I was about to make. In the final scene, the daughter of the rabbi is getting married and during her dance with her father, a philosopher whom Allen made a documentary about, does a voice over while the couple are dancing:

“We are all faced, throughout our lives, with agonizing decisions – moral choices. Some are on a grand scale. Most of these choices are on lesser points but we define ourselves by the choices we have made. We are in fact the some total of our choices. We win and fall so unpredictably, so unfairly; human happiness does not seem to have been included in the design of creation. It is only we, with our capacity to love, that give meaning to the indifferent universe. And yet human beings seem to have the ability to keep trying and even to find joy from simple things like their family, their work and from the hope that future generations might understand more.”

In the very first chapter I mentioned Viktor Frankl, the Austrian psychiatrist and Existential philosopher, who spent three years in German concentration camps. It is impossible to write about the meaning of life without extensively quoting Frankl, who has written thirty-two books on the subject, including Man’s Search for Meaning, which at the time of his death in 1997 had sold 9 million copies. The next chapter is all about Frankl and where he says meaning can be found but before I leave this chapter on Existentialism and the idea of imposing meaning on what is otherwise a meaningless life, let me quote Frankl again:

“Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.”

Two other existentialists have said something similar:

“There is no meaning to life except the meaning man gives to his life by the unfolding of his powers.” (Erich Fromm, psychologist)

“If, after all, men cannot always make history have meaning, they can always act so that their own lives have one.” (Albert Camus, novelist)

The Meaning of Life (Chapter 3): Religion as Meaning

Religion: noun. The belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods. (Oxford English Dictionary)

Most of us are given the meaning of life as soon as we are born – the meaning of life for many, if not most, people is their parents’ religion.

Fourteen days after my birth, I was baptized a Roman Catholic by Father Michael J. Healy at St. Augustine’s of Canterbury Church in Montreal – the same Father Healey who would marry Anne and me on a cold Friday in February 28 years later. In first grade at the local (public) Catholic school, Saint Antonin’s, I was taught the Catechism – a catalogue of everything Roman Catholics believe. I remember some of it by heart:

Who made me? God made me.
Why did God make me? God made me to know, love and serve Him.

At age 7, I went to Confession for the first time and made my First Communion. At age thirteen I was “confirmed” by the bishop. Through the sacrament of Confirmation Catholics reaffirm (as adults of sorts) the faith into which they were baptized as infants and are given a third name – in my case, David. It is the Christian version of the Jewish Bar Mitzvah. So, by age 13 I had all the meaning anyone needed. The Catholic Church, like all of the great religions, has all of the answers. As Pope John Paul II said to 19,000 students in New York City on October 3rd, 1979:

When you wonder about the mystery of yourself, look to Christ, who gives you the meaning of life. When you wonder what it means to be a mature person, look to Christ, who is the fulfillment of humanity. And when you wonder about your role in the future of the world … look to Christ.

It is all very reassuring. And it did work for me – for a time. I was particularly pious, if not religious, as a child. I remember that in elementary school I would walk to seven different churches on Holy Thursday (the day before Good Friday), as per the Catholic tradition. It took me about three hours. In retrospect, I probably liked the obsessive-compulsive quality of the task!

But somewhere in my mid-teens, I began to have serious doubts about my faith. I found myself pretending to go to Sunday Mass. I would leave the house at 8:30 – in plenty of time to get to 9 o’clock Mass at St. Malachy’s Church. But I would not go to church; I would wander the streets and return home at 10:30, so that my mother wouldn’t be any the wiser (my father wouldn’t have cared one way or the other). I felt ashamed of myself but not ashamed enough to actually sit through Mass. By the time I was 18, I was openly disdainful of believers. I mocked the pilgrims who, on their knees, climbed the hundreds of steps to St. Joseph’s Oratory on Queen Mary Road. I saw my mother’s piety as ignorance. At age 27 I returned to the Church because by then my fiancé, Anne, was the only meaning in my life and she was a devout Catholic.

There are two problems with inheriting your parents’ religion as the meaning in your life:

1. You don’t have a chance to properly examine all the alternatives, including agnosticism and atheism, and then make a free choice. Until my first contact with the Jesuits, at age 18, the teachers and priests in my life did not encourage me to study the tenets of the world’s other great religions. All of the great religions operate in this way. Like the Juggernaut of Hindu myth, the idols of the great religions are dragged along in procession atop an impressive carriage under whose wheels all questions and doubts are crushed. It is my view that if an individual discovers meaning in life, instead of being given it, that meaning will be far more robust. According to Viktor Frankl, “Meaning must be found and cannot be given”.

2. The other problem with inheriting your parents’ religion (or even choosing a religion) as the meaning in your life is more serious. It is the high probability that your religious beliefs are in fact false. There are four major religions in the world today: Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism (the fifth largest, Judaism, is only 1/25th the size of the fourth largest so I am not including it). These four religions are not compatible with one another; indeed some of the varieties of Christianity and Islam are incompatible with each other. With my apologies for greatly oversimplifying, here are the tenets of the four religions:

• Christianity is the most populous and widespread religion in the world, with about 2.1 billion adherents in 260 countries. Christians believe that Jesus Christ was (and is) God and that mankind was reconciled to God through Christ’s death on the cross.
• Islam, with 1.4 billion adherents in 184 countries, is the second largest religion in the world. Unlike the Hindus, Muslims believe that there is only one God, called Allah in Arabic, and that the last and greatest of God’s messengers (greater than Jesus Christ, who was definitely NOT God) was the Prophet Mohammad. Islam is obviously not compatible with Christianity. If the Christians are correct in their beliefs, then the Muslims are misguided. And vice versa. (Many people may be surprised that Muslims love Mary, the mother of Jesus. Mary (peace be upon her) is the only woman specifically named in the Quran. The Quran discusses Mary’s miraculous conception as well. She asked the Angel Gabriel: “How shall I have a son, seeing that no man has touched me, and I am not unchaste?” (Quran 19:20). The Angel Gabriel said: “So (it will be): thy Lord saith, ‘That is easy for Me: and (We wish) to appoint him as a Sign unto men and a Mercy from Us.’ It is a matter (so) decreed.” (Quran 19:21). Mary then becomes pregnant. )

• Hinduism, the oldest of the big four religions, has about 837 million adherents worldwide but is found almost nowhere outside India. Hinduism has many gods, the greatest of which are Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. Hindus believe that all creatures go through a cycle of rebirth (reincarnation). The cycle of rebirth can only be broken by spiritual self-realization – the union of self with the Brahman or Godhead. Hinduism is totally incompatible with the two most populous religions. If either of the other two religions is correct in its beliefs, then the Hindus are wrong. And vice versa.

• Buddhism. There are an estimated 350 million people in 92 countries who adhere to Buddhist beliefs and practices. Like the Hindus, Buddhists believe in reincarnation but that is where the similarity ends. The cycle of rebirth can be broken but not by union with God (The concept of a personal God does not fit into the Buddhist system of religion. In general, Buddhists are pantheistic in their view of God. Many view God as an impersonal force which is made up of all living things and holds the universe together); the cycle can only be broken by achieving Nirvana, the extinction of all desire. Buddhism, a religion without a god, is as different from the other three as it is possible to be. In fact, having no God, it does not even meet the Oxford English Dictionary’s criteria for a religion (see above).

My point in describing the tenets of the four most populous religions is that if the meaning in your life comes from your religion, the meaning in your life has, by definition, a very high probability of being meaningless. The best-case scenario is that the most populous religion, Christianity, is factual (Jesus Christ is God), in which case a little over 2 billion people embrace a meaning in life that, in fact, is real. But even in this best-case scenario, it means that the majority of people on earth, namely two and half billion Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists – not to mention the Jews, Confucians, and Sikhs, etc. – cling to a meaning of life which is, to put it bluntly, misguided.

Thus, we have here a true dilemma: on the one hand, only religion – not science – has anything to say about the purpose of life, but, on the other hand, most people who find meaning in life in their denominational religious belief are, by definition, wrong.

Of course, it is possible to believe in God without joining any particular religious sect. This is sometimes referred to as spirituality (as opposed to religion). The central defining characteristic of spirituality is a sense of connection to a much greater whole which includes an emotional experience of religious awe and reverence. But as meaning goes, the belief in God, by itself, is pretty thin gruel. The reason people search for meaning is that such meaning has implications for how one should live and the purpose that derives from such meaning makes it easier to bear the suffering that is inevitable in life. When you are all alone and it’s late at night, the thought that Jesus Christ is your personal Lord and Savior, may help you through the night. The thought that there is probably an unknowable Force that guides the universe is not much of a consolation.

Another way out of this dilemma is the Baha’i faith. There are approximately 6 million members of the faith and the center of the Baha’i faith is in Haifa, Israel. Founded in Iran in 1844, Baha’i teaches that the revealed religions of the world are in agreement and that the respective prophet-founders (Abraham, Krishna, Moses, Zoroaster, Buddha, Christ, Mohammad and the Baha’i prophet, Bahá’u’lláh) of each of the religions revealed the will of God for a particular time and place in history. Boy, that’s a stretch! Well-intentioned, maybe, but a stretch. By this account, 2006 years ago God sent a messenger (Christ) who told us He was God, then, 570 years later, God sent us another messenger (Mohammad) who told us that Christ was not God after all. According to the Baha’i account, God keeps changing his (or her) mind or he (or she) has a strange sense of humor!

The bottom line (for me) is that the kind of meaning I am searching for cannot be found in religion. But who am I to say? Many people brighter than I am believe. The Jesuits who were my teachers at Loyola of Montreal are the most intelligent group of people I have ever encountered and they believe. Similarly, many of the Existentialists (see next chapter), like Kiekegaard, Tillich, Buber, Maritain, even Frankl, who admit that life, per se, is apparently meaningless, impose religious meaning on their own lives.

All I’m saying is that it doesn’t work for me. It doesn’t get me through the night.
So science and religion have not been helpful in my quest for the meaning of life. Maybe philosophy will provide some answers.

The Meaning of Life (Chapter 2: Scientific Theories)

Science: Those branches of study that relate to the phenomena of the material universe and their laws, sometimes with implied exclusion of pure mathematics. (Oxford English Dictionary)

The question “What is the meaning of life?” means different things to different people. The vagueness of the question is inherent in the word “meaning”, which opens the question to many interpretations, such as:

• “What is the origin of life?” and “What is the nature of life and of the universe in which we live?” – scientific questions

• “What is the purpose of life?” – a theological question.

• “What is valuable in life?” – a philosophic question.

Let’s look first at what science has to say. Today, at the beginning of the 21st century, this is science’s answer to the question: “What is the meaning of life?” (Isn’t Google a wonderful thing!):

The origin of the universe:

The Big Bang Theory is the dominant scientific theory about the origin of the universe. According to the theory, the universe was created about 15 billion years ago from an explosion that hurled matter in all directions. This explosion is known as the Big Bang. When this event occurred all of the matter and energy of the universe was concentrated in a mass the size of a golf ball. Where that golf ball came from no one has a clue. The Big Bang Theory is credited to Edwin Hubble. Hubble made the observation that the universe is continuously expanding. He also discovered that a galaxy’s velocity is proportional to its distance from us. Galaxies that are twice as far from us move twice as fast. This observation provided the foundation for the Big Bang Theory because it confirms that it has taken every galaxy the same amount of time to move from a common starting position (the exploding golf ball) to its current position. The Big Bang Theory received its strongest confirmation in 1964 when Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, using a radio telescope, heard radiation from the farthest reaches of the universe. This discovery of what is assumed to be the radioactive aftermath of the initial explosion (which took a long time to reach us) lent much credence to the Big Bang Theory. Penzias and Wilson won the Nobel Prize for this discovery.

The nature of the universe:

The universe may be infinite in size, or it may be of only finite size. Strange as it may seem, the universe could be finite, a finite universe would not have to have any edges or an end, it could ‘wraparound’. The universe may be a curved three-dimensional space that wraps around and closes on itself. If you set out in a spacecraft heading in one direction, you could eventually return to the same spot from the opposite direction.

The entire universe, or just the visible portion of the universe if it’s infinite, is roughly 27 billion light-years across. That’s 159,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles.
The universe is full of stars, arranged in enormous groups called galaxies. Our Sun is one star among 100 billion in the Milky Way Galaxy. And there are about 100 billion galaxies in the universe, each with a comparable number of stars.

The origin of life:

There are four competing theories as to the origin of life on earth:

• Life arose spontaneously. And the first organism was able to grow and reproduce, which led to the evolution of the diverse life forms that now exist on Earth. But under this scenario the original organism would have appeared by the random and serendipitous coming together of all the necessary materials under exactly the right conditions. This is somewhat like believing that because while digging you found a rock that looked like a brick, if you dug long and hard enough you would eventually find something that looked like the Sistine Chapel!

• Life evolved from simpler organisms. Some scientists feel that life originated spontaneously as a much simpler organism than any now found on earth. A difficulty with this idea is the absence of any current examples of this “much simpler organism”. In general, appearance of more complex organisms has not resulted in disappearance of simpler forms. We still have cockroaches. We still have fruit flies.

• Its unknowable. Some scientists take the view that the origin of the primordial organism is “unknowable”, meaning that not only do we not know but we are unlikely to ever know and that the subject is therefore more appropriate for philosophy or religion than science.

• It came from outer space. Some believe that life originated elsewhere in the universe and was then somehow carried here – perhaps on a meteor. Of course, this theory suffers from the same deficiencies as the first two.

The origin of human life:

Once you had some form of life on earth, more and more sophisticated forms could evolve by a process called natural selection. The modern understanding of evolution is based on Charles Darwin’s theory popularized in his 1859 book, The Origin of Species. Natural selection is the process by which individual organisms with favorable traits are more likely to survive and reproduce, thus passing on those traits to their offspring, with the result that beneficial heritable traits become more common in the next generation. Thus far, humans are the most sophisticated form of life produced by this process.

Actually, I like to think of myself as a scientest. I think that science is the only way to the truth about anything and everything. But the problem is that science cannot go beyond the data available, and most of the really important questions cannot be addressed using the scientific method.. With respect to the question, “What is the origin of the universe?”, I am sure that the Big Bang Theory is correct. Hubble’s observation that galaxies which are far away are travelling much faster than galaxies that are close to us is consistent with an explosive beginning. If all the pieces exploded from the same point, then the pieces that are now farthest away must have been travelling faster than the pieces that are still near the point of explosion. And the two guys that got the Nobel prize for hearing the radioactive aftermath of the initial explosion are, I’m sure, deserving of the prize. The problem for me is that no one has any idea how that exploding golf ball got there in the first place. Now, that’s a question that really interests me! Similarly, regarding the nature of the universe, I know why the scientests say that it may be finite or it may be infinite. The problem, again, is that scientests cannot go beyond the data available and if the leading edge of the exploding universe is too far away from us for the light from there ever to reach us (light travels exactly 186,000 miles per second relative to the observer – the only constant in nature) then the scientests cannot know if what they see is all there is or if there are pieces of the universe beyond the furthest one they can see. Still, the answer is disappointing. The scientests answer to the origin of life is even more disillusioning. There are four theories, one of which is that the origin if life is unknowable. Again, I understand that science is limited by the data available but I am disappointed still.

The only piece of the science answer that I find totally credible and satisfying is the Theory of Evolution. The theory adequately describes (at least for me) how primitive life evolved into higher life forms and finally into human life but it too is somewhat unsatisfying in that it fails to account for the origin of the first microscopic life form.

To put it bluntly and with all due respect to the Nobel prize winners who came up with it, I find science’s answer to the question, “What is the meaning of life” both pathetically incomplete and profoundly unsatisfying?

When I’m all alone and it’s late at night I take no consolation from the knowledge that the universe originated 15 billion years ago with an exploding golf ball. Nor am I impressed with the fact that the scientists know that, if the universe is not infinite (it may be infinite) it is 159,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles across. Science’s four competing theories on the origin of life (one of which is that it is unknowable) I find, again with all due respect, sad and silly.

There are people who do not need any more meaning in their lives than what science provides. The husband of a friend of mine believes that he will survive death because the atoms in his body, after it decomposes, will not be destroyed but will eventually be reconstituted into other molecules. Some of his atoms will eventually be contained in rocks or trees, others will migrate to the bodies of other living creatures – even humans. Wordsworth expresses this notion in one of the “Lucy” poems, written in homage to a three-year-old girl who died:

Three years she grew in sun and shower,
Then Nature said, ‘A lovlier flower
On earth was never sown;
This child I to myself will take,
She shall be mine, and I will make
A lady of my own.

‘Myself will to my darling be
Both law and impulse: and with me
The Girl, in rock and plain,
In earth and heaven, in glade and bower,
Shall feel an overseeing power
To kindle or restrain.

I remember reading somewhere that my body may well contain a few of the atoms that constituted Shakespeare’s body. So, in that sense, Shakespeare, who died in 1616, survives in me! And several hundred years from now most humans will have in their bodies a few of the atoms of my body. The husband of my friend, finds this thought consoling. Not me.

So, scientific theories are really of no help to me in my search for meaning in life. I’m looking for more than that. Let’s turn to religion, which for many people – perhaps most people – constitutes the meaning in their lives. Maybe religion will fare better.

Many great scientests were also very religious. Albert Einstein was one:

“…To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms—this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I belong to the rank of devoutly religious men…”

He pointed out that the two domains, science and religion, do not overlap:

“…science can only ascertain what is, but not what should be, and ouside of its domain value judgements of all kinds remain necessary. Religion, on the other hand, deals only with evaluations of human thought and action: it cannot justifiably speak of facts and relationships beween facts…”

But he also said:

“Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind”.

Let’s see what religion has to say about the meaning of life.

Man’s Search for Meaning (The Meaning of Life:Chapter 1)

I have been searching for meaning in my life for at least 35 years. In October of 1969, I began my collection of quotes, Words to Remember, and the very first entry was the last sentence of Thornton Wilder’s novel, The Bridge of San Luis Rey: “There is the land of the living and the land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only meaning, the only survival.” Obviously, in October of 1969, at age 29, married for just 20 months and father to a one-month-old son, I was still interested enough in the views of others as to what constituted the meaning of life that I started writing down anything I read on the topic.

I am not alone. I think most people, once they discover that all paths lead but to the grave, ask themselves:

“So, what is the meaning of life?”
“Why are we here?”
“How should I live my life?”
or similar questions.

Why do we do this?

Many writers think that the search for meaning is a natural reaction to the feeling of emptiness and the experience of absurdity that is part and parcel of being human.

The Russian playwright, Anton Chekov, in his play, “The three sisters”, puts these words on Masha’s lips:

But man has to have some faith, or at least he’s got to seek it, otherwise his life will be empty, empty…How can you live and not know why the cranes fly, why children are born, why the stars shine in the sky!…you must either know why you live, or else…nothing matters…everything’s just nonsense and waste…

Albert Camus, the French-Algerian novelist, dramatist and philosopher, agrees completely with Chekov:

Losing life is a trifle and I will have that courage when I need it. But to see the meaning of this life vanishing, our reason for existing disappearing, that is what I cannot stand. No one can live without reason.

Another playwright (and the first President of the Czech Republic), Václav Havel, puts it even more forcefully:

The deeper the experience of an absence of meaning—in other words, of absurdity—the more energetically meaning is sought.

The American philosopher, Eric Hoffer, says we need meaning to make sense of our suffering:

We need not only a purpose in life to give meaning to our existence but also something to give meaning to our suffering. We need as much something to suffer for as something to live for.

The writer who had the most to say about man’s search for meaning was the Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist, Victor Frankl, who wrote a best-selling book called Man’s Search for Meaning. Frankl postulated that the search for meaning is the primary motivation of humans. He compared his theory with those of two other Viennese psychiatrists, Freud and Adler. He noted that whereas Freud proposed a will to pleasure (Libido) as the root of all human motivation, and Adler a will to power (the drive for superiority), he (Frankl) assumes that a will to meaning is our primary motivation.

As evidence for this view, Frankl points to research that shows a strong relationship between meaninglessness (as measured by “purpose in life” tests) and such behaviours as criminality and involvement with drugs. He says that watching violence and drug use on television, in movies, even in music, convinces the meaning-hungry that their lives will improve if they imitate their “heroes.”
He says that people often become anxious on Sunday afternoons because all of the distractions that keep them from confronting the meaninglessness of their lives are unavailable then. “Sunday neurosis”, he calls it.

He then goes on to explain how many mental and emotional disorders are caused indirectly by a lack of meaning in one’s life. The hypochondriac, for example, not understanding that his anxiety is due to a lack of meaning, focuses the anxiety on the possibility of contracting AIDS; the agoraphobic sees her anxiety as coming from the world outside her door; the person with a social phobia focuses on performing in public. All anxiety neurotics thus try to make sense of their discomfort with life – without even realizing that the source of their anxiety is what Frankl calls the existential vacuum in their lives.

Similarly he describes the trio of aggression, addiction, and depression as symptomatic of the feeling of meaninglessness or existential vacuum that exists in our society.

In the first lecture of my Theories of Personality class I say to the students: “One test of any one of these personality theories is whether it is true for you. Has the theory matched your own experience? Does it explain what you have done and felt and thought?” If you use that test on these three views of the human motivation, many of you will probably come to the conclusion that I did, namely, that Frankl is closer to the truth than are Freud or Adler.

The Meaning Of Life (Preface)

I am a retired clinical psychologist and university teacher. I have written an essay on The Meaning of Life. I will post it here in sections. Today I am posting the Preface:

Three convergent threads in my current life led me to write this essay:

• I am at an age (66) where meaning in life is more than academic. Recently I had the thought: “What if it is a fact that when you die, you simply cease to exist? That at that point you will no longer be conscious and, more importantly, you will not even be aware that you ever lived. You will survive only in the memory of friends and relatives.” The thought was so horrifying that I became weak in the knees and had to sit down. I kid you not. A few days later I had lunch with a friend (whom I had gone to college with when I was 18-21) and told him what had happened. “That’s the first time that that thought occurred to you?”, he joked. I admitted that it was.

Until recently I thought that being a Catholic would serve as meaning in my life until my cremation but then about a year ago I had an experience that made me rethink that assumption. It was a week before Easter and, as always, Anne and I went out, after supper, to our annual confession (a Catholic’s “Easter Duty”). I began my confession with the usual preamble: “Bless me father for I have sinned. It’s been a year since my last confession. To put my confession in context, let me say that I am a retired psychologist. I am married and live with my wife. We have two grown children who live elsewhere. I should also tell you that I do not believe that Christ is God”. That preamble had always worked in the past in that it provided the priest with a context for what I was about to confess. Every confessor till then had carried on with the sacrament as if every second penitent admitted that they did not believe Christ was God. In fact, one priest – a Monsignor, no less – whispered: “Neither do I”! But the priest I encountered on this fateful day was a young firebrand from the Fraser Valley and he was not amused. He said, in what seemed like an unnecessarily loud voice: “Confession is not a form of free psychotherapy; it is for believers. Have a nice day”! I was properly humbled, got up from the “prie dieu” and walked back to my pew. He was right, of course – even if he was rude.

At that point I had two choices:

• I could stop going to church. But I would miss it. For one thing, I love the Catholic Mass. It is a beautiful ritual. High Mass, especially, appeals to me. The invariant formulaic prayers, the priest’s chanting and the choir’s response, the incense. In a world where everything else is so efficient, the Mass is a delightful return to a previous unhurried time. I even use the older forms of Mass prayers because they are less prosaic. The “Prayer After Communion”, for example, in the modern post–Vatican II formula reads: Lord Jesus Christ, with faith in your love and mercy I eat your body and drink your blood. Let it not bring me condemnation but health in mind and body. I much prefer the older more poetic form: What has passed our lips as food, O Lord, may we possess in purity of heart that what is given to us in time be our healing for eternity. I would also miss meeting many of my friends every Sunday because ninety percent of the people we socialize with are people our age who attend St. Joseph’s Catholic Church. Of course, I would also miss going to church with Anne.

• I could continue to go to church but ACT AS IF I BELIEVED. This is not
as hypocritical as it sounds. As a psychologist, I practiced a form of
treatment called Behaviour Therapy. Behaviour Therapy is based on the
assumption that if a person deliberately changes the way he or she behaves it
will have a profound effect on the way they think and feel. Persons
suffering from depression, for example, are advised to behave AS IF THEY
WERE NOT DEPRESSED. I would tell my depressed patients: “Imagine
that your are an actor trying to win an Academy Award for portraying the
role of a person who is particularly content, cheerful and excited. People
will respond to you more favourably, your thinking will become more
optimistic and you will feel much better.”

So, that is what I decided to do. I began to ACT AS IF I BELIEVED. I
prayed harder. I genuflected more fervently. I talked like a believer. I tried
to win an Academy Award for portraying a man who had a shot at
canonization! I haven’t become a saint yet but I have my hopes. In the
meantime, my search for meaning in life continues and writing this tract
may contribute to that search.

• A second thread of my current life that led to this book is my ongoing collection of what I call “Words to Remember”. Begun in October of 1969, “Words to Remember” is a spiral notebook in which I copy out passages from books I read. Some of the transcribed passages impressed me because of the content, others because of form, and still others as simply good examples of the writer’s work. Many of the passages are philosophic statements, mostly from novelists, about ultimate questions. I also have a computer file of my favourite quotes from the daily emails I receive from A.Word.A.Day, many of which also address ultimate questions. By the way, this is a wonderful web site: http://wordsmith.org/awad/. If you sign up (it’s free) they send you an email every day with an English word that you may or may not have encountered before plus a quote. The quote today (July 11, 2006) is “One of my greatest pleasures in writing has come from the thought that perhaps my work might annoy someone of comfortably pretentious position. Then comes the saddening realization that such people rarely read” – John Kenneth Galbraith, economist (1908-2006). Anyway, I have been meaning to type my “Words to Remember” quotes into the computer file that contains my favorite A.Word.A.Day quotes and then organize all the quotes into a set of categories, e.g., philosophy, science, literature, humour, etc. The result would be “Ledwidge’s Familiar Quotations” of sorts. Writing this treatise will not only organize the philosophic quotes from both sources but also provide continuity between them – making the whole collection seamless. Well, seamless may be too strong a word! We’ll see.

• The third incentive to write this book derives from the fact that I have just finished writing my autobiography, a project I began in 1997. I had ten copies bound and I am very pleased with the result. But now that it’s over I miss the writing. My autobiography was a source of pleasure during the first four years of my retirement. During that time I often found myself bored and restless. The writing disposed of many an afternoon for which I had no other use. This new project may serve the same purpose.