Virtue Quest

Deep thoughts....

Pardon me while I get all philosophical for a bit.

Those who have known me a while know that I suffer from clinical depression. The meds and some good therapy have that pretty well under control; but it’s linked to something that is beyond the scope of medical science. I have a bad habit of asking, “What’s the meaning of life?” or, “What’s the point of it all?” or, closer to home, “What’s the point of my life?”

Yes, I’m a Catholic; and I do buy the whole “know, love, and serve God in this life so that I may be happy with him forever in the next” idea. But it’s an idea: it’s words that I assent to in my mind, but that don’t always reach to my heart, or my gut – which is where those questions of meaning come from. In other words, I still ask, “What’s it mean to be happy with God?” or even, “Why did God make me in the first place?”

The questions “Why?” and “What does it mean?”

A good friend once suggested to me that most people – me included – put much more stock in what something means than what something is, and that this is a backwards way of living life. A person, or an experience, or even an object is only “significant” because it first exists in reality. A relationship has to be lived before it can “mean” anything.

He has an excellent point. I tend to over-think just about everything in my life, and on a cultural level it’s much easier to find “analysis” than it is to find “news.” There’s a certain cart-preceding-horse-ness about this whole approach.

At the same time, the question of meaning is one that just doesn’t go away. And, in terms of “what my life means,” anyway, I’m looking for something deeper than explanation or analysis. But it’s hard to say exactly what it is I am looking for. What am I asking when I ask “why?” or “what’s the point?”

What’s behind these questions, at least for me, is a sort of “what’s worthwhile about it?” or “is it any good?” And I think that’s what “a meaningful life” or an answer to “why?” would entail: I want to see and recognize what’s good about the world, and about my being in the world. I want to know that my life is good.

Not just a moral good

Now, this isn’t quite the same thing as, “I want to make the world a better place.” Of course, I want to be a morally good person: I want to be the kind of person who does kind and loving things, who makes living better for those around me, and so on.

But there’s something that comes first: there’s the very fact that I’m alive, that I exist in the world at all.

Or, in more philosophical terms, is goodness convertible with being? Is existence itself good?

Now, for some people, that’s an absurd question. It’s obvious to them that it’s good to exist. But that’s not universally true. Besides quirky people like me, there’s the whole tradition of Buddhism. If I understand it correctly, Buddhism teaches that existence is an illusion, and that we can escape from the illusion – not into a greater reality, but into nothingness, into not-being. The way to save oneself from suffering is to escape from existing.

And yet, I have real experiences of the goodness of being. For me, being something of a nerd, the paradigmatic moment was sitting in high school chemistry when I suddenly understood the structure of the periodic table. It was beautiful. It was profound. It opened up the world to me. I just wanted to stare at the chart on the wall for hours on end.

I’ve heard normal people describe similar experiences in watching a sunrise, or hearing music. Sometimes, it takes the form of awe at another person. Sometimes it’s falling in love.

The point is, it almost doesn’t matter that I’m there to see it; what matters is that this beautiful, wonderful thing exists. And if the periodic table is good – indeed, if anything at all is good – then that goodness is a part of the real world. In other words, the world has a “meaning,” a “point,” it’s “worthwhile,” at least as far as the periodic table goes.

And if I can recognize it, that recognition is also good. That means that, as far as my ability to recognize something good goes, I am good, worthwhile, and my life has some kind of meaning.

Ditto for everybody else in the world.

Now, this isn’t an air-tight proof that any- and everything that exists is good by its very existence (though I think it’s a step toward that), but it does remind me that the burden of proof lies with pessimism. I have the ability to recognize good in all sorts of things, including myself.

And that’s not bad.