Sickness, death, personal failure, natural disasters: how do we make sense of the challenging events in our lives? What does it mean with bad things happen? Is there a purpose to it all? In this video, I reflect on the pressing questions we face in life and how we find answers.
The following is a text version of this blog posting.
The question has become a caricature. A person approaches a spiritual teacher and asks, “What is the meaning of life?” Of course, in cartoons, there are all kinds of witty responses from the spiritual teacher. But the caricature is based on something that’s true for many people: life’s most important questions are often related to meaning. What does it mean when bad things happen to good people? How do we make sense of death? And what about aging, sickness, and debilitation? How can we wrap our hands around the puzzling questions of life, questions that do challenge us because the reality of life can be very difficult?
Growing up in a religious context, I wasn’t just provided with the answers to life’s questions, I was also told what the important questions were. I began my formal religious education by memorizing questions and answers from a catechism, a standard text based on dogma. I was prepared with the answers as well as the questions.
As a young adult, I discovered these neat and tidy answers didn’t fit life’s realities. And the questions were essentially contrived. In my early 20s, I began working as a hospital chaplain. I was much too young for that work, but that’s what I was doing. Since I was the youngest chaplain on staff, I was assigned to the pediatric unit. I think someone assumed that since I was young, I’d be good with kids. On the pediatric unit, I was confronted with questions for which I was not prepared. I met children no more than two, three, and four years old who were seriously abused in their homes, some left with permanent brain damage. I met children diagnosed with cancers, some of whom died within months. I met young adolescents with sporting-related injuries who were left paralyzed. The question, what is the meaning of life, quickly became, “How can anyone make sense of these tragedies?”
Perhaps I was lucky. I learned at an early age that pre-packaged answers aren’t a response to the real questions we have about life. As I look back, I see that grasping onto the misguided efforts to provide simple, pat answers to life’s questions was absurd. More difficult was understanding how one comes to an answer to the challenging questions of life.
What I know for sure is this: no one can tell you what the answer to life’s important questions is. Nor can anyone tell you how to arrive at answers to those questions. The only real answers to life’s significant questions are the ones you arrive at yourself.
Sometimes it’s helpful to talk with others and hear how they have come to an answer or some resolution to a question like the one you are facing. It’s not because their answer will be your answer. Instead, what another person shares from their own experience may allow you to compare what you’re experiencing in hopes of coming to understand what’s similar and what’s different.
Over the last year, I’ve been trying to come to an understanding of what it means for me to be aging. It surprised me that I found this to be more challenging than I thought it would be. Over the past year, I’ve had to face that despite regular exercise and medical treatment, my body simply doesn’t move the way it once did and that when I do move, there’s often pain. In talking with a good friend about how she has lived with pain and limitation, I became more comfortable with the idea that this was my new reality. I didn’t need to struggle with it but to make peace with it. I’m not going to be in my 20s or 30s again when I used to go out dancing all night. Slowly, I’m making peace with the reality of the limitations I’m experiencing with aging. But part of the answer to this question of my aging is that I have an opportunity to experience life in a way that I never have before. So, for me, understanding what is happening to my body as a new experience to embrace is helping me to move from a kind of despair to acceptance, at least for right now.
My point is that the answer to what is pressing in on my life is an answer that I need to find. And it’s that way with you as well. Others can support you in the process. But in the end, the only answers that will satisfy are those which make sense to you.
Yes, while it’s tempting to ask the wise spiritual teacher about the meaning in life, the truly wise teacher will help you understand that the answer lies within you. Sometimes, it takes a while to arrive at that answer. But remember: leaning into those questions and answering them ourselves is an important part of life’s journey.