Meaningless

Yesterday afternoon I was sitting on the front porch on a beautiful summer’s day.  I had just finished writing the piece below.  My wife came out to tell me she’d received a call from her sister telling her that Donald Trump had been shot.  I rushed inside and put on CNN and watched video of the former president surviving an assassination attempt.  I still feel sick thinking about what I saw and what it means for our world.  Politics took a back seat to humanity, the preciousness of life and the precariousness of democracy when violence supersedes debate and elections.  This morning I’ve been thinking about Abraham Lincoln, the Kennedy brothers, Martin Luther King, and the afternoon over 40 years ago when my dad walked into our living room to tell me that Ronald Reagan had been shot.  Before I turned on CNN, I turned off the show my daughter was watching.  A kids show.  I felt I couldn’t shield her from reality.  She would eventually hear that Trump had been shot.  So, I told her, figuring it was best that she heard it from me.  Eerily reminiscent of my father telling me about another attempted assassination many years ago.  The piece I wrote below is about “meaning.”   When it comes to meaning I have many questions and few answers.  I worry about the world my daughter is growing up in.  And, whatever the future holds, I pray that hope triumphs over fear, and peace wins out over violence. …

My daughter teases me about only buying her “meaningful” books with titles like Time is a Flower and I Like Myself.  She’s right.  She has a thick stack of thin hardcovers targeting girls written by authors trying to boost the self-confidence and resilience of their young readers.

I search for meaning constantly, and I make choices about what to do based on that search.  As a teenager, I loved the Beverley Hills Cop movies.  The eighteen-year-old that still lives somewhere inside me almost screamed with joy when I saw that Netflix just released the latest movie in the series, ‘Axel F.’

A few nights ago, I was alone at home at night.  All I had to do was press a button and summon Eddie Murphy as Axel Foley to my TV screen.  I couldn’t do it.  I could not give up myself, and my time, to what would undoubtedly be two hours of laughter, gunfights, and car chases.  I scrolled aimlessly for awhile, and then sought out a documentary on September 11^th.  I watched firefighters walk up stairwells and people plummet from buildings.  It was deeply unsettling.  And I went to bed and slept well.

Meaning is comforting.  It’s hard to describe how happy I felt when my two most recent book purchases arrived in the mail.  Sebastian Junger’s In My Time of Dying and James Lee Burke’s Clete.  Junger writes about nearly dying from an aneurysm, and, how on the verge of death, his deceased father appeared above him, and a dark void opened below him.  His heart was beating, he was conscious, and he saw these things.  Junger, an atheist, narrates his own near-death experience and then explores the phenomenon, of those who have clinically died, come back, and recounted lights, tunnels, and encounters with dead relatives and friends.  In My Time of Dying is full of love, mystery, purpose, and quantum physics.  It leaves the reader with wonder, questions, and hope.  Burke is my favourite novelist.  His Dave Robicheaux novels pull you into Louisiana and immerse you into crime, tragedy, honour, friendship, and love.  Burke too writes of mystery and wonder, and his words convey the way in which we live in a world where beauty and horror are everywhere all at once.  Beauty and hope always win, but good people pay a price for those victories.  James Lee Burke is a gift to our world.  His words nourish me.

I can’t even go for a damn run without being on some kind of quest.  The problem is I don’t always know what I’m searching for.  When I was forty-years old I qualified for the Boston Marathon.  Injury prevented me from actually running Boston.  I’m 13 years older now and still haunted by the personal best time I ran over a decade ago.  I believe that, despite my age, I could beat that time by training really hard, and staying injury free.  However, I haven’t been injury free for over a decade.  My heal constantly hurts, often joined by one or both of my knees.  And the time it would take to do the type of training I’d need to do is precious time.  Every three hour long run on a Sunday morning is time not spent with my family.  And that’s what really matters.  So, I run a bit less, and nurse my injuries along, and pursue running from entirely different angles like beauty and health.  Beauty in the landscape I run through, and health is my pursuit of trying to maximize the time I have in this world with those I love.  So, while almost daily I fantasize about running fast times and setting a new personal best in the marathon, reality usually entails finding meaning in dusty trails that lead to ridgelines I have yet to explore. 

My daughter does acknowledge my capacity to give up the search for meaning.  At Christmas I usually buy her the latest edition of the Guiness Book of World Records. Together we flip through the pages and marvel at the not so meaningful things our world has to offer like Mr. Methane, “the longest working flatulist in the world.”  On my own, I would never choose to read about a world-class farter.  But with my daughter beside me nothing means more.

I find meaning in writing these words.  In somehow translating swirling thoughts within me to something concrete.

… I’d just finished writing that sentence when my wife walked out on the porch.  And everything became meaningless.