the meaning of life

Out in the pristine air of the mountains of British Columbia things could, from time to time, become quite clear.

A voice shot through the air from a cut block ten kilometers away and out of my radio. "OK, fine. Well here's a really tough one... In the scene where Princess Buttercup confronts Prince Humperdink with the fact that he hasn't sent his four fastest ships after Wesley... what is the color of her dress?" I paused, momentarily stumped and not willing to admit it - The Princess Bride being, truth be told, a bit of a specialty for me. "I'm waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaiting..." Craig's voice blared out.

"Let me answer your question with another question, Craig", I shot back, "How about you just shut the fork up? No, no wait, that's not it. The real question is... what is the meaning of life?"

A pause, though much shorter than my own. "Oh, that's easy", he replied, "the meaning of life is... YES."

Then, silence. A long pause.

"Oh, so like, meaning is a function of affirmation, discovered in a positive response to the perpetual question or questions asked by existence?" I replied, eventually. More silence. "Craig?"

Craig wasn't there. Craig was off on the cut block, planting trees.

Later in the eating tent I asked Trevor what he thought was the meaning or motive force of his life. Trevor was and is a big, friendly giant, nicknamed "Moose". He gave a slightly dopey impression, but was actually very intelligent. He started to respond and I interrupted to say no, no - just think about it. I don't want to know a flippant answer or what you think ought to be the answer, I want to know the truth around which you organize your life.

He grinned that big Trevor grin, munched some salad and grinned some more and at last said, "Fun. Yeah, fun. That's it. I guess the criteria I'm most likely to judge things by is fun - if something is fun, then I guess I see that as good."

Now, an eating tent at chow time is tight quarters, so our conversation provoked some bysitters to get involved. One self-involved person made a disparaging comment of some sort, another chap defended Trevor's honesty and soon the tent was sparking with "meaning of life" conversations. Tree planters, alone with their thoughts all day, make excellent armchair philosophers. Or would, if they had any armchairs.

It got livelier - crescendoed a few times. There was no consensus - just the arbitrariness of an impromptu discussion of experts without the streamlining benefit of a qualified facilitator (that would have been me, of course, having read Albert Camus' The Plague twice and taken at least two separate undergraduate philosophy courses). I just sat there, enjoying the rabble that had been roused.

It seemed to me, though, that most of the more honest people agreed with Trevor. We are, it would seem, a society of hedonists, who have been taught (surprise, surprise) by a pop education to demand constant titillation, stimulation, and novel experience. We follow our emotions, experiential minions enslaved to whatever it is that can make us feel, that day, as though we are having fun.

This is stupid. Emotions are an important part of human experience, and provide excellent clues to how we're really doing, inside. As a guiding light, however, they're fairly... er... shady, and more likely to lead us over a cliff than anything.

Craig, I think, had a slightly better bead on it. Saying YES to life does not mean being led around by the emotive nose, but rather standing on the side of a mountain and accepting the way things really are. It needs to go further though, I think. It is not enough (although possibly further along than most folks will get) to simply affirm Reality, becoming a veritable "yes man" to the Universe. I reckon the Universe does not need or want Yes Men. It needs men who say "yes, sir", accepting in humility the Truth of Reality and then boldly moving forward in that knowledge, marching in the Right direction.

"Yes" is only a transitional moment. The real question is what you do with that yes. The hedonist (and we are, all of us, hedonists) says, "yes", and then proceeds to do whatever is necessary to avoid any of the unpleasantries which he or she has just affirmed. But what good, really, is a life spent pursuing pleasure, fleeing ugliness? Pleasure is a fickle god who does not care, sending us hither and yon at a whim and then flouting us, again and again, when we least expect it.

Pleasure is good, of course, but as a result of a life spent acquiescing to Reality, not as a framework for approaching life itself. The titillation we see as real pleasure when we spend our lives in service of Fun is really, I'd guess, a lazy person's alternative to what we really want out of life, which is Joy. Joy, which has an objective status apart from the circumstances of personal experience, reflects the smile that is plastered all over the face of Reality itself - a pleasure that exists both because and in spite of all aspects of truth, both pleasant and unpleasant.

Is this too vague or paradoxical or romantic a vision? Possibly, yes, but I am of the school (Josh's Institute for Kids Who Don't Think Good... and Stuff) that thinks that vagueness, paradox, mystery and romance are not the end of the world - possibly only the start. Truth and the meaning of life are perhaps best appreciated and apprehended vaguely, by feel - not, as the Hypocrisy Police will have immediately noted, by pure emotion, but rather in a more holistic sense by the Spirit, which is a broader and less quantifiable notion.

Maybe truth is less felt or understood than it is guessed at and lived. Perhaps that is why Craig thought it best, when he had just been pestered into revealing the Meaning of Life, to turn off his radio and go back to planting trees.