I often wonder, as I watch a man dart across the street, phone in one hand and coffee in the other, whether he is chasing time or running from it.
We are in a strange hurry these days, as though something vital lies just around the next corner; if only we might refresh the page fast enough. It would be comical, were it not so sad, and tragic, were it not so ordinary.
The newspapers speak of economic crises, political crises, environmental crises. But no one prints the headline that should be scrawled in bold above the fold of every morning paper: Man Forgets Why He Is Alive.
We have not so much fallen into a crisis of meaning as we have misplaced meaning behind the couch cushions of convenience and distraction. And like so many lost things, we may not miss it until the house burns down.
Meaning, I am told, is a luxury, a matter for poets and lunatics, to be considered only after the dishes are done and the inbox is cleared. But I say, it is the only thing not worth postponing. You can survive on bread alone, perhaps, but not without wondering why you eat. The body will march on without the soul, like a clock whose gears grind long after the hour has passed. But is this living?
If we are not in a meaning crisis, then we are simply early to it. A sort of dress rehearsal for the abyss.
The world spins faster, though we are not sure who wound the key. Technology promises connection, but delivers noise. Progress marches forward, but no one is quite sure who’s steering the horse. Even leisure has become laborious, measured by likes and tracked by algorithms, each moment optimized, monetized, and utterly demoralized.
It was not always thus. Once, a man could walk into the woods and feel himself enlarged by the trees, not diminished by their indifference. Once, a woman could sit by a brook and find in the water’s babble more wisdom than in a dozen books. The stars still shine, but now they compete with screens. The moon still rises, but we forget to look up.
And so, what is to be done? Must we all flee to the forest, build cabins, and write treatises on beans? Perhaps not – but one could do worse.
The remedy, I suspect, is not complex. Meaning does not hide in the Himalayas, nor require a Wi-Fi password. It dwells in small things. The kind word. The well-swept floor. The friend who listens. The loaf baked without ambition. To regain meaning, we must become poor in everything but attention. We must choose to see again, and in so doing, remember that we are not merely consumers or voters or profiles – but souls, capable of awe.
I recommend a radical course of inaction. Sit still. Look at your hands. Smell the wind. Write a letter with ink and forget to send it. Speak with a neighbor and do not record the conversation. Attend to the world as if it were alive (because it is) and you may find yourself alive in it.
Let us not panic, though the moment is grave. The soul does not expire like milk; it waits. What is needed is not revolution but recollection. The memory of why we began. The knowledge that a single daisy, properly observed, is a better education than all the news. That a morning spent mending a fence or watching an ant can restore a man more surely than a sermon.
Yes, we are in a meaning crisis. But meaning is not gone; it is only quiet. It waits in the margins, in the silences we no longer keep. If you want to find it, I suggest you go outside. Leave your shoes, and your certainty, at the door.
Join us in making the world a better place – you’ll be glad that you did. Cheers friends.