The Meaning of Life

I was discussing the meaning of life with an ignorant agnostic. Now, I'm not going to generalize here--not all agnostics are ignorant people. Some are very intelligent. This agnostic wasn't.

But I'm still thinking about the meaning of life... because I want my life to be ideal, perfect... everything in place, like a good stage manager's first aid kit.

I've heard it said that the meaning of life is putting things in holes. Such a postmodern concept: the meaning of life is forming context, relationships with people and things, connecting nodes in the brain. It's all text.

And I do that. I guess.

But I also break things apart. I'm the kid who would take off the back of the cassette player to see all the pretty colored wires on the inside.

I destruct.

I analyze.

And I write.

If I put things in holes, I spend the rest of my life poking the things out again and scrutinizing the holes and the things. I examine Christianity and theatre and people, because these are the things I care about.

What in your life grants meaning, and how?

For a friend of mine, it's visceral experiences. He hasn't told me this... but I know. It's the warm, fuzzy, deliciously 12-year-old-and-reading-Playboy feeling he gets when he reads Kurt Vonnegut. It's the accomplishment he experiences when he works really hard on a show and lives it. He's a pastor's kid--but he really should almost belong to the First Church of Epicureanism. It's not hedonism; it's a little too simplistic and admirable... it's just experience.

Good Friend, he of the giggles and Blue Moons, doesn't tend to think there is a meaning--because if there is, I guess he'd have to have some responsibilities. The meaning of life, to him, he says, is "Who cares if there's a meaning of life?"

Hmm.

I think that I care.