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.)Continue Reading