Life 101, A Wise Man's Advice for Adulthood

Oscar Ameringer once said with tongue in cheek, "Except that I inherited certain characteristics from an unknown number of unknown ancestors, was deeply influenced by persons most of whom were dead before I was born, and shaped by circumstances over which I had no control, I am a self-made man."  The only appropriate response would be the one George Bernard Shaw is reported to have made to someone who boasted of being self-made: "Sir, you have relieved God of a tremendous responsibility!" The truth is there's no such thing as a self-made person. We are all, in part, the product of a variety of influences in our lives. That includes everything we've been told or taught. If you are an American, or a member of a political party, or a follower of a religion, chances are it's because your parents were (though with respect to religion that's less true than it used to be.) Those are all part of the "givens" of our lives, but they're not the...

This word myth is a word that has two quite different meanings and that's confusing. One meaning is "falsehood".  When we call something a "myth" we mean it's a fairy tale, it's not true. The other meaning of "myth" is altogether different.  In this sense a myth is something that is so true it can't be expressed in ordinary language.  The opening chapters of Genesis in the Bible, for example,  provide a good illustration.  They describe the creation.  (There are two stories actually, somewhat contradictory.)  They are myths, not to be taken as literal descriptions of creation, but the fact of creation.  They don't provide answers to the questions of how creation came about and when (those are questions for scientists), but rather answers to the questions of Who created it and why? (which are questions scientists don't try to deal with.) "Mythic Horse", by Tim Holmes The problem some people have in understanding the Bible...

There is yet a fourth question to which we'll give greater attention later on. It has to do with one's response to everything that is. It's a follow-up question to the other three. After asking, "Who am I?" , "How do all things cohere?" and "Where am I going?" I must ask, "How do I respond? What ought I to do? What is expected of me?" This is the ultimate question. Only to the extent that I'm clear about my identity, my purpose and my relationship to whatever isn't me, can I then get any clear idea of where I ought to go with my life. To some people the word "responsibility" seems awfully heavy. I've gotten a kick out of the name of the Catholic Church in Garrison Keeler's Lake Woebegon as "The Church of Our lady of Perpetual Responsibility." But it needn't be a heavy word. The word simply means "the ability to respond." I believe one could describe the relationship b...

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?...

"Meaning" in terms of personal definition is only part of the search. There is also the question of how I fit with everything else. To ask "What is the meaning of life?" is to ask "How do all things fit together? not only "How do all branches of knowledge and learning form a unified and comprehensible whole?" but "How do the varieties and complexities of experience in life holds together in any kind of discernable pattern?" To ask what is the meaning of my life is to ask "How do I fit in with all else that is in nature and in history? What is my relationship with my family, my community, my country, everything else?" The question is asked out of a desire for wholeness, a need to know that "I fit." The difference between meaning understood as "definition" and meaning understood as "purpose" is like the difference between the meaning of a word and the meaning of a string of words in a sentence. "Div...

MEANING AS "DEFINITION"   (1)  Vaclev Havel  has said,  "The tragedy of modern man is not that he knows less and less about the meaning of life, but that it bothers him less and less."  Perhaps this is because we've thought of the question as an aerobic exercise and we've no time for that. But I believe there is a way to approach and explore the question in an uncomplicated and straightforward manner than sets the trivial overcomplification aside and gets right to the point. It begins with an understanding of the word "meaning" itself.  In the middle of the last century, two Oxford philosophers,  C. K. Ogden  and  I. A. Richards , wrote a book entitled  The Meaning of Meaning  in which they documented no less than sixteen different meanings of the word. Of these sixteen I think there are four directly related to the question we're raising about "the meaning of life." All four of these questions are of absolute importance as we ...

                         "The world is not  a divine sport, it is a divine destiny.  There is divine meaning in the life of the world, of man, of human persons, of you and me."                 --Martin Buber When all is said and done, what is it that people most want in their lives?   Countless answers to that question have been proposed.  Psychologist and founder of psychoanalyses, Sigmund Freud , was convinced that what people wanted most was pleasure .  Alfred Adler , a student of Freud's who later broke away from many of his teachings, claimed that what people really wanted most and struggled for is power .  But it was another Viennese psychiatrist  by the name of Viktor Frankl who proposed what I believe is the nearest thing to a right answer to our question.  He said what...