Recently I had an occasion to speak to a group. I was asked to help people make sense out of life when things are not going the way we planned or hoped. Clearly, if we live long enough, we know this happens to all of us. It is more a question of when it will happen, rather than if it will happen. Actually, it has happened to me multiple times, as I am pretty sure it has for most other folks.
Related to this issue is the situation in which we find we are alive and doing things, but there does not seem to be any reason or purpose to what we are doing or even to life itself. We hear people complain about going through the motions. We might get a salary or paycheck, but we get no sense of meaning or satisfaction from things. This kind of situation might well be a good way to describe hell on earth. We don’t have to die to know what deadly feels like!
With this backdrop, I gave some thought to how humans find or make meaning. I am good either way. If we find meaning, that suggests it already exists and we have to discover it. But if it does not exist out there somewhere, then we have to make meaning or create it. I think most of us have done both. My mind was mulling over this stuff when I read a quick, but engaging, account of a man’s experience as he related it in one of my alum magazines. John West is president of the Harvard Alumni Association. I know this organization exists, but have not interacted with it and do not know John West.
His story is a quick story. He said, “Five years ago I was on a plane from Boston to Los Angeles and I had a heart attack. The plane was grounded in Phoenix and they took me off and I was fine. But in those moments, life was simplified for me down to one word, which is love---which you’re not going to hear from a lot of HBS guys.” HBS stands for Harvard Business School, one of the elite incubators of global business folks who are destined to make a ton of money. They can have almost anything they want. Some may make more in a year than I have in my lifetime.
But it does not guarantee they will be happy or have meaning in their lives. Of course, they can buy almost anything they want. Most of them will be privileged beyond what I can imagine. All this is true and yet the one thing that became quite clear to John West was the centrality of love. Almost any religious tradition can tell you that and an MBA is not required. In fact, no educational degree is necessary. In fact I suspect sometimes our education and our privilege may actually get in the way of authentic love. We may have too much at stake to become vulnerable.
And that is precisely what the heart attack did to John West. It rendered him vulnerable. Suddenly his life was out of control. He was at the mercy of others. It is probable that the health care workers saved his life. I assume they got paid the same whether he was a millionaire or a bum. Love cannot be bought. It is always a gift. I know I still find this difficult to accept. I am the kind of person who usually has had to work for what I get. No doubt, I have done this with respect to love, too.
I began my little presentation to the group with this story from John West. We don’t need to know him to appreciate what he is sharing with us. It feels authentic, even to read it in print or online. He shares something very deep which he learned on that plane trip to a place he never expected to take. He paid for a plane ticket to LA and got sidetracked into a lesson in love. He didn’t even know he would find it in Phoenix! But I suspect he could have found it anywhere---in Seattle, Indianapolis, New Delhi or anywhere else in the world.
I am sure there is a connection between love and meaning. If you have found love, I am confident you also have found meaning. Most students I teach want to be happy. I do, too. But I am also confident that happiness is not the same thing as meaning. When I type that, I think about the New Testament telling us that God is love. I can believe that. I don’t think it tells us anywhere that God is happiness.
I think there is too much suffering and pain in our world for God to be happy. Of course humans can be happy---and that is appropriate. But I also know we are called to be at work with God in the healing of the world---what the Jews call tikkun olam, which they call “repairing the world.” One can only do this out of love. I don’t see any other motivation sufficient to pull humans into this kind of work.
I don’t know whether the group took anything from my remarks on finding meaning. I know I benefited a great deal. I was happy to find John West’s little story. That story could be my story and it could be almost anybody’s story. It might not be a heart attack. But I do pray that somehow my mundane, boring life can be interrupted sufficiently that I learn the lesson of love.
If I learn this lesson, I am sure I will be finding meaning in the process.
Those of us who have read theology or, perhaps, those who are people of faith and are old enough might well recognize this title as a reminder of the late Jewish philosopher and theologian, Martin Buber. I remember reading Buber’s book, I and Thou , when I was in college in the 1960s. It was already a famous book by then. I am not sure I fully understood it, but that would not be the last time I read it. It has been a while since I looked at the book. Buber came up in a conversation with a friend who asked if I had seen the recent article by David Brooks? I had not seen it, but when I was told about it, I knew I would quickly locate and read that piece. I very much like what Brooks decides to write about and what he contributes to societal conversation. I wish more people read him and took him seriously. Brooks’ article focused on the 2016 contentious election. He provocatively suggests, “Read Buber, Not the Polls!” I think Brooks puts
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