Do you know I was asked many many times when I was in the front lines of the
--no, when the people in the death trade thought I was a good idea--
to come and talk about finding meaning at the end of life.
That was the standard request.
So you can see the idea that meaning is somehow
potentially elusive or even fugitive and has to somehow be wrung from the circumstances
is behind that question.
It's a particularly modernist dilemma to find meaning,
but the real problem is in the conceiving of it as something you have to find.
You can hear the language implies that it's hidden,
or that you're not looking in the right place,
or that there's some nefarious architecture that keeps it from you,
or that--you understand--
--or that you have to just claim so-and-so as your own personal saviour, you know...
But what if meaning's not hidden?
What if it's not something to find?
What if that's not the story?
What if the story is that meaning is not found at all--that it's made?
It's made by the willingness to proceed as if certain things must be:
like life has to continue, not "you" have to continue;
that life is not your lifespan or your children's lifespan or the lifespan of what you hold dear.
How about holding dear the fact that nothing you hold dear lasts?
How about holding that close to your bosom?
That's making meaning of the end of life, the willingness to do that.
It's not hammered into the sky for all to see so that nobody could forget.
You see how precarious the whole proposition is,
that it actually has to be lived out and told in order to pertain.
It has no police, it has no enforcement branch, you know...
It just, if you're kind of not willing for it to be so, it probably won't be.
And what's the consequence of that?
Well, it's not a conjecture. Look around you. Our way of life is the consequence.
Life does not feed life.
Life is on the receiving end of life. Always.
No, it's death that feeds life.
It's the end of life that gives life a chance.
It's a hurtful kind of comfort, maybe, that the dominant culture of North America
is in some kind of beginning stage of a terminal swoon.
Because it's beginning it's hard to tell the difference between that and dancing,
or having a good time, but it's terminal alright,
meaning there's no turning back from it. There's no undoing it.
Alas, it's worse than talking about it as a punishment.
It's not a punishment. No more than dying is a punishment for having been born.
Our particluar dilemma, I think, is trying to live the realization that
what the world requires of humans is not that they piss off already,
and "why don't you all die and then we'll go back where we were."
No, I think the world whispers,
"All we need of you is that you be human. That's it."
The dilemma is in the meaning of the word 'human.'
What has to die is your refusal to die, your refusal for things to end.
If that dies, life can be fed by that.
And so the plea is not for punishment; it's for remembrance.
You're not supposed to feel bad about having forgotten; you're supposed to feel more.
You see, that's the invitation.