Meaning & Truth
Image by Randy Graf
It’s okay to feel lost sometimes in life, to feel as if you don’t know what you’re doing. Feeling lost from time to time is something everyone goes through, and it may be closer to the truth to say that people go through life feeling this way most of the time. Life is complex, and when things feel overly simple, as juxtaposed to things being simple as they can be, one should start to wonder whether or not they’re missing out. Simplicity isn’t a bad thing, but neither is complexity. It can mean that a person is more engaged in life, that they are living and striving instead of merely existing.
Part of the challenge is for a person to find out what is true for them. This is made more difficult by the fact that it is easy to find an abundance of people who will tell you what you should believe and what you should do. It takes discipline and restraint to practice discernment and not passively absorb all the information floating around. If a person does that, the truth will soften until it is devoid of any form and definition. It won’t be black and white, or even gray, but as clear as liquid and only capable of producing the image of whatever belief is most convenient to them at a given moment in time. Through this flimsy definition of the truth, a person might garner favor, but it’s not how you create the meaning and purpose that is necessary to guide you through the difficult times in life, when public opinion is not on your side. The search for meaning and truth is a collective endeavor that everyone engages in, but the truth that is discovered, no matter how similar it appears on the surface in comparison to others, belongs only to the individual. In order to find it, a person has to make their own meaning, test their own theories about living, and learn for themselves the strength or weakness of their views.
It can’t be given. It can’t be arrived at secondhand. You can talk to other people, listen to them, watch movies, and read books. They can show you what it looks like to be searching, and what it feels like to discover truth in the most unpredictable ways, but they can’t give it to you. They can reveal the places where it makes sense to look, including the places within yourself, but they can’t go there. The space between people exists for this reason. So that each person can and inevitabley has to look for themselves in order to find truth. The differences between people serve to bring into sharper relief individual values, and these differences, instead of being negative, are opportunities to discover something new about the world and what it means to live in it.
That doesn’t necessarily mean any of this is easy or pleasant. Searching for truth isn’t a Saturday in the park, and it isn’t supposed to be, but it also isn’t as bad as people make it out to be, not always. It’s important to stay curious and allow oneself to be surprised by whatever it is that resonates within, even if it shocks you. Moreso, it’s important to keep going, keep searching, keep doing whatever it is one needs to do in order to join the chorus of people living with meaning and purpose.