Last week, was “my week of everything.” My computer, at the most urgent of moments, began to make a curious humming sound. This increased to a piecing crescendo and then, with a belated shudder, stopped. “No worries,” I remarked to myself. “I have my phone.” I was busy and work ended in the wee hours of the morning. At home in bed, I glanced over at the device nuzzled next to me on my night table: I was safe. Sadly, when I awoke, there was a command on its screen: “Type in your Android Password.” Now, I don’t have an android password and, to be honest, I don’t even know what that means. All my attempts at restarting the phone failed. Totally nonplussed, I was forced to conduct a class totally digitally naked: I had no electronic crutches whatsoever: humbling to say the least. I succeeded and thus realized that all this technology is but a modern Jean Passepartout, (1) nothing more. On my way to the office, I stopped at the electronic shop. Thinking that it was simply a misplaced command, I nervously proffered the phone and gingerly, and sheepishly, presented the problem. After feverishly pushing numerical and alphabetical buttons and having the mobile emit various burps and buzzes, the technician looked at me with a disgusted glare of incredulity. “In my ten years in the cell phone industry, I have never encountered this problem,” he announced. I am a technical Luddite and seem to have that effect on devices. The next series of conversations resulted in terms such as “unheard of, motherboard, irreparable and words of that ilk.” I felt crestfallen, to say the least. Then I was reminded of the age old adage attributed to King Solomon in second Corinthians: to paraphrase – “This too shall pass.” (2) And pass it did. Within a week, my computer was running as if no problem had every existed and my “smart phone” was as clever as ever, maybe even cleverer.
I remark on the times in my life that I anguished over something, a situation perhaps, that was simply repaired or replaced: “no big deal,” as the pundits say. At the time, however, it appeared life altering and irreconcilable with a continued existence. These types of inquiries are certainly presented when one thinks of, “What is the purpose of my life and what is my role in its occurrence?” These are large existential questions that hold no easy answers. I tend to favor the view that life, simply put, has no intrinsic purpose. I am flung by a gust of celestial wind upon the face of this planet. Then, however, it gets interesting because, to paraphrase Dr. Victor Frankl (1905-1997), each of us is obligated to find our own meaning in life and, most notably, each life does have a meaning. “For the meaning of life differs from man to man, from day to day and from hour to hour. What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person’s life at a given moment … Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life; everyone must carry out a concrete assignment that demands fulfillment. Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated, thus, everyone’s task is unique as his specific opportunity to implement it.”
This meaning has to be mined, much like one pans for gold. (3) There are no easy answers; no trite and concise solutions. Great people are not born; they are created, and yes some with extraordinary talent. But for every talented success story that are hundreds of gifted failures. The world of substance abuse: drugs, alcohol, bad love affairs, etc., has crippled many a budding Chopin (1810-1849). The great secret to life is to talk to your inner power, to your God, and uncover His mission for you: it is there. The role of meditation is more and more important. This takes on many forms: a session twenty minutes a day reciting a sacred mantra or a vigorous walk in the mountains conversing with nature. This week, the great scholar and environmentalist, Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), leaves us with a thought: I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms.
A small joke: An elderly father took his adolescent son to the barber’s shop. He had his thinning hair cut first. Then it was the child’s turn. “How would you like your hair cut?” the barber asked the young man. I would like it just like my father’s,” was the laconic reply, “with a hole in the middle.”
This week, please ponder your own sense of mission in your life.
Every day look for something magical and beautiful.
Quote: The beauty of the human mind is its ability to sail the seas of adventure or get shipwrecked on the sandbars of despair. Every man is his own captain and plots his own life course.
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