Several days ago on NPR, the delightful Tom Ashbrook hosted philosophical questioner Maria Popova on On Point. Typically, scholarly conversations that speculate about the purpose of life elicit a groan from the bowels of my soul, along with the mental image of grizzled elders picking their noses while pontificating on the minutia of meaning and its definition.
Perhaps it happened to be the right time to hear Tom and Maria’s discussion because I found myself swept along with each word. Here were two people discussing modern everyday queries, but they addressed these through the lens of philosophers and thinkers from the ancient days all the way to the present. It finally became clear to me that folks have been contemplating the same root issues and challenges throughout the centuries—echoes multiplied over the millennia. What is love? What is purpose? What is of worth? What is trust? What is the point? (And yes, even those in the direst of circumstances can still wonder, perhaps even more so than those in better situations. Simply read one of the many accounts written by Auschwitz survivors to see the trail of questions and the search for purpose that helped them to live through such an ordeal.)
The last months have brought me a profound sense of loneliness. Not only because I don’t always know what questions I’m asking exactly…only that they’re there…but also because there are few people in my acquaintance that are asking too (or at least have shared that they do). Not many have the courage to peer into the light and shadowed parts of themselves. And those I do know who are, are facing the same struggle to find others of like mind. In On Lies, Secrets, and Silence, Adrienne Rich summarizes this perfectly within the context of love:
An honorable human relationship — that is, one in which two people have the right to use the word “love” — is a process, delicate, violent, often terrifying to both persons involved, a process of refining the truths they can tell each other.
It is important to do this because it breaks down human self-delusion and isolation.
It is important to do this because in doing so we do justice to our own complexity.
It is important to do this because we can count on so few people to go that hard way with us.
“Because we can count on so few people to go that hard way with us.” There’s that loneliness.
But there’s also kinship. Millions listen to On Point and millions visit Maria’ blog, brainpickings.org. Millions. And they’re searching too. We all try not to get bogged down in feelings of isolation and the interview serves a wonderful reminder that none of us are alone really, and that our thoughts/questions are often mirrored in the eyes of those around us.
I beg you, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.
