R. MEANING AS PURPOSE (3)

The word "meaning" is often found in conjunction with the word "purpose." The words are related, but by no means synonymous. The word "purpose" delineates a third level of the meaning question. In this sense the word "meaning" suggests intention. When a language teacher points to a word on the blackboard and asks "what is the meaning of this?" she is asking for a definition, our second distinction. Should the same teacher enter the classroom to find a scrawled caricature of herself on the blackboard she might inquire "what is the meaning of this?" in which case she would be asking not only for the symbolism of the drawing, but for its intention or purpose. This aspect of the "meaning" word evidences itself in such everyday expressions as "I mean" or "I meant" to do something, which is to say "I intend: to do it."

"Unsurity", Tim Holmes 
To ask "Does life have a meaning?" is to ask, on this level "Is there an overall encompassing purpose of life?" To speak of a mechanistic universe as being "without meaning" is to say that it is without intention, without previsioned purpose or goal. But the question can be asked on a much more personal level: "What is the intention of my life? what is its direction, its goal?" Or what will I make it purpose, its goal? This, too, is an ongoing question. Martin Buber (Jewish philosopher) said that "every journey has a secret destination of which the traveler is unaware." Or we may become aware of it incrementally.

Robert Maynard Hutchins, the philosopher to whom I referred earlier, is reported to have lamented, "I went through high school in order to go to college and through two years of college without knowing why." It's not too early for you to be asking the question. The answer may be slow in coming, or may go through a series of answers. But the question needs to be asked and taken very seriously. It involves not only what you want eventually to do, but the style with which you choose to do what you do and the impact you hope to have.

Here are a couple of good statements that give us some good clues. 

"The great use of our life is to spend it on something that will outlast it." -William James, psychologist

"A man has made a good start on discovering the meaning of human life when he plants trees in the shade of which he will never sit."  -Elton Trueblood, Quaker theologian

Many cultural analysts today are saying that today's youth are so focused on the present that "they display a radical decline of interest in the past and a sharply waning hope for the future." To the extent that this is true, it is not healthy for youth or for the larger society. The "purpose" aspect of the meaning question is, therefore, as critical for the nation to be asking as for individuals. It is a question which each of us has a responsibility to help our nation ask of itself.

Now I've introduced the word "responsibility" which, to many, comes across as a very dark and heavy word. It needn't be. And to that we'll turn next.


TOOLS & APPROACHES- R

Next:  MEANING AS RESPONSIBILITY

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