The non-meaning of life


A wise person once told me: Life has no meaning.
Things happen and there's really no meaning attached, it's not personal. We give meaning to particular events through the stories we give them. And then we weave them together to spin one really big tale: happy, sad, tragedy, comedy, drama... For example: love affairs start, they end, love affairs come and go and someone like, okay me, could make up this story: I'm a failure at love. Or it could be this story: I've been blessed with rich and gorgeous love affairs with some great men. Story #2: my jobs have been a big roller coaster: hired, fired, self-employed, 401k-employed, back to square 1: unemployed: Sob, what a failure. Or, the story could go: what a varied quilt of cool and unusual jobs I've been graced with, and I had some balls to take some different chances, if I may say so myself. When I pass through the gates of heaven (or wherever), boy, will I have some good stories to tell. There. Much better!

Each of us can be our own best cheerleader. Others offer support and lifelines but do you give yourself the kind of unconditional support and love you expect/want/wish for from others?

e.e. cummings, both mysterious and beautiful, offers up these line in a poem (54):

you shall above all things be glad and young.
For if you're young, whatever life you wear

it will become you; and if you are glad
whatever's living will yourself become...

I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance

I'm not really sure what it means other than the playing with the theme that we have a choice about how much we want to struggle and make life difficult/tragic/melancholic -- or be content. What if our default setting was to be Happy and we just f'd things up along the way.

Ever noticed how melancholia can be like potato chips--you have a little nibble (self-pity--so nice & salty!) and you just can't stop?

Years ago during a difficult time, the image of river's current came to me, and I saw life as a series of currents and that I just had to find the right ones and go with them, rather than against them. And when I feltswept up in an undesirable current, I just had to ride it out until it dropped me into a calm eddy or pool then be ready to move!

What story can you re-tell yourself to add some pink light to your outlook. What stories can you just drop? What if we could shed our past like a snake and just possess this day?

Top painting, "Death and Life," by Gustav Klimt