The Time I Discovered the Meaning of Life (and Then Forgot It)
Every human being dwells intimately close to a door of revelation they are afraid to pass through.
- David Whyte
When I was around middle school age, I was with my family in my grandfather’s apartment sometime around New Year’s. He had gathered everyone (uncles, aunts, kids who were old enough like me) to share what they wanted out of life. (I don’t recall him ever doing this before or after; it might’ve had something to do with his own soul searching in the face of an imminent divorce from my grandmother).
He might have asked what we all wanted out of the next year. But I obviously thought he said “life,” so I responded: “I want to find the meaning of life.”
I remember everyone laughing somewhat affectionately at this. The feeling I got was: that’s cute and ridiculous. But more ridiculous than cute.
I felt like defending my statement and saying: how could anything else matter to you all? Maybe, because they were all devout Christians, they thought they had the whole meaning thing settled. In any case, it was far from settled for me.
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Fast-forward to 1995. I was 18, and I was regularly going to raves on weekends, taking psychedelics when they were available, and dancing until the morning. But this evening the police or fire marshal or some authority figure shut the rave down, leaving me and friends with a lot of LSD in our systems and nothing to do.
Somehow, we made our way to a friend’s home and just aimlessly “tripped” there for the rest of the night. I quickly realized that LSD is a different experience in a relatively quiet living room than a thumping dance floor. I remembered eventually settling into a couch and staring at a picture on the wall.
I don’t remember what precipitated this, but at one point the meaning of life opened up to me. It was just there, like a secret whispered by the universe. I remember being shocked and overjoyed and thinking: I must remember this.
When I woke up the next day, it was gone. The meaning of life had visited me in the night but left me in the light of day. I figured if it was important, it would come back.
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In modern (post-traditional) societies, we basically have three choices when it comes to meaning:
Scratch and claw to hang on to a traditional (usually ethnic-based) religious meaning,
Craft some new meanings that satisfy us (emotionally, intellectually, ethically), or
For those who couldn’t latch on to either of the first two options, descend into what 19th-century sociologists called ennui (a chronic boredom with life bordering on depression).
Most people weave in and out of these three and cobble together a satisfactory life nevertheless. But what if there is, in actual fact, a meaning to life beyond religious tradition (#1), that isn’t just a set of arbitrary choices (#2)? That’s what I felt I had on that couch that night but lost.
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This question about meaning stuck with me, driving me into academic religious studies, psychology, political philosophy, and eventually a dissertation on how regular ol’ suburban folks like the family I grew up in make meaning in isolating, fragmented environments of sprawling tract housing, freeways, and big box stores.
But it wasn’t until our son was diagnosed with a life-threatening brain tumor at age 4 that I made some headway back toward the meaning of life. In the days, weeks, and months that followed his brain surgeries and the start of chemo, I had this overwhelming clarity toward the meaning of my life. It was to care for this fragile, beautiful, little boy.
I had no sense that this care came from me “creating” meaning and certainly not by adhering to the meaning given by tradition or anyone else. Instead, it was like meaning was simply bursting through my life, like a flood. And I was swimming in it.
It took me years to reverse engineer this explosion of meaning and discover (for real this time) the meaning of life. Because this is a newsletter, not a dissertation, I’ll cut straight to the chase: the meaning of life is a process that begins with radical, unflinching honesty, which then moves into deep, profound connection with others, which then unleashes a torrent of meaning. Honesty, connection, meaning.
I found that there are plenty of parents who go through medical crises with their kids and don’t feel what I felt, just as there are many who do. The difference is how truly honest they can get with themselves and others. For me, I opened up inside to all the fear, helplessness, and inadequacy I was experiencing. I didn’t try to put on a brave face (except when I was teaching—that was my one performative respite).
This honesty with myself and others opened me up to the most tender, beautiful, and caring connections. I cried with family and friends, sat and walked in silence with them, and slowly learned how to talk about what I was feeling. This internal honesty not only connected me to friends and family but it connected me even more deeply with my son.
The weeks and months that followed were painful and shocking but also incredibly lovely, peaceful, and above all meaningful. Everything I did was easy and flowing, whether it was driving hours a day in my commute to teach at two different colleges, spending nights and days in the hospital, preparing the house for Max to come home, or literally anything else.
This surplus of meaning eventually faded as Max’s chemo routine kicked in, he was able to go back to preschool part-time, and we learned how to manage a child who still couldn’t walk well or fully use the left side of his body. My inner world slowly closed up as we started to find a new normal.
It wasn’t until years later, when I was designing health programs for childhood cancer parents that I went into therapy and began piecing together what I had lost and gained when Max was diagnosed. I realized in those early days around his diagnosis I had once again discovered the meaning of life, and just like when I was 18, I forgot it.
Over the past five years I’ve slowly pieced it back together and this time I won’t forget. Honesty. Connection. Meaning.