Reflections and Structures

Overly Busy (?)

Today I woke up, emailed out a schedule I'd forgotten about yesterday, took my grandfather to the hospital, outsourced some typing work to be done for the department at university, did some shopping (food and the like), talked to Flo about her job and looked over a document she was sending out to a prestigious prospective employer, answered email and sent out a contract, did translation work and sent out my monthly invoice, answered more email on everything from the new Consortium's logo to writing articles, worked on finalising the presentation for tomorrow's training session, discussed some international licensing options for HR services, set appointments with students for the diploma papers I'm supervising, did a little more super-urgent translation work, answered even more email, took part in a business dinner, furthered plans regarding setting up a(nother) company and talked to my father a little in the evening.

Then I realised that my second workday of the day is starting now, that I have more work on tomorrow's presentation and that... all this carries an important message. There must be meaning to all this, otherwise why the hell am I doing it?

Meaning is in us. We make meaning. All this toil has no point, no purpose without the meaning I assign to it. Otherwise it's silly, ridiculous even. Nothing has meaning in and of itself, nor does there seem to be a general, objective meaning to anything. Somewhere in the depth of our current understanding of life and the universe lies an explanation that I expect resembles what I just wrote.

The fact that things, events and outer reality seems to provide us with a sense meaning is helpful, because we're "outer-oriented". We project meaning onto external reality, we give meaning to physical rules, to objects, to events. But they don't need it, do they? Objects in physical reality don't need to mean something in order to exist. Meaning is something only the mind requires, because that's the way it is built.

Were it not for that, we wouldn't have the struggle to find meaning. We wouldn't worry about the fact that actually--we're not going to find it. We're going to find intermediate goals (meanings) and they will be useful, primarily because they'll keep us from self-destruction.

My aim in saying all this isn't to clarify meaning or purpose. That's up to you, for yourself and to me, for myself. The point is to reflect what I'm feeling ever-more strongly: that there is no general purpose, that I can choose any meaning in life (or have one imposed on me--actually a combination of the two, personal history/experience plays a role in its totality here, I'm sure, among many other things). I need to have a purpose in order for my life to have meaning, that's for sure. As for what that purpose should be...

An interesting problem arises here: the interaction between my purpose and others', between my meaning and others'. This is something that takes place all the time, we meet and greet, and feel kinship sometimes. And not other times. Basic meanings "clicking" or not, thoughts vibrating on the same wavelength and frequency, or not. I've italicised that because I'm becoming fascinated by the fact that thoughts are necessarily material things, albeit quite subtle (the electrical activity in the brain and all that, Bohm talks about it some in Wholeness and the Implicate Order, which I'm trying to read through). At their most subtle, brain cells are supposedly like quantum computing machines, we have discovered in science now.

Part of what I feel is meaningful includes adding to this blog, and I've been missing it. (Emotions to be looked from a quantum computing perspective is for another day, please!) I tend to prioritise to the advantage of business and work, which is kind of natural in the Western mindset--but we tend to miss what we sacrifice, don't we.

Such a question (regarding meaning/meaningful things and the meaning of life), if asked correctly, arouses strong emotions in the listener. Often, those emotions aren't positive and it's precisely for that reason that we tend not to ask... those who are ready and able, though, should not shy away from them.

Go Explore Meaning (for Yourself).

posted by Ciprian Man @ Tuesday, October 31, 2006