OPINION - My search for meaning

Is meaning created or discovered? Is the truth out there, or does the hero lie within me? And how do we decide?

In my search for meaning, I knew that there were certain things that were true for me and about me, things that were binding and non-negotiable in my life, regardless of whatever else was stitched through the fabric of the cosmos. Here’s a few examples...

The Germans have a word, sehnsucht, which means a longing for something you can’t quite grasp but yet you still desire it. Joy and Beauty create this longing in us.

I knew that I believed in Love. Not just love, but Unconditional Love. I wanted to be loved without fear of rejection; loved for who I was and not based on what I did.

I believed in Justice. I knew that some things were absolutely wrong, objectively and bindingly, whether anyone agreed with me or not. For instance, I knew that sexually abusing a child was ALWAYS wrong and NEVER a matter of opinion. And where such absolute wrongs existed, they should be put right, made just. The laws of nature can’t create matter, they only describe how it works. In the same way, the moral law (our sense of right and wrong) doesn’t create what matters - it merely frames it.

I believed in Purpose. I wanted my life to go somewhere and to be about something; to count for something.

I believed in Freedom. I wanted to be free, not enslaved.

I believed in Beauty. I knew that when I listened to beautiful music it was transcendental, taking me out of myself towards something else - something bigger. ‘A sense sublime of something far more deeply interfused’ as William Wordsworth wrote. Awe is simply the realisation that something is both real and bigger than you.

I believed that Death felt unnatural to observe, no matter how many times I observed it.

You know you believe in Unconditional Love when you feel rejected.

I knew that when I carried absolutely anything up a short flight of stairs I would always say, ‘Well, I won’t need to go to the gym today!’ That’s not the most important thing on this list, but truth is truth.

I knew about things like Hope and Joy. I didn’t just understand how to use these words in conversation; I recognised and apprehended the sensations that fill you when these things are present. The Germans have a word, sehnsucht, which means a longing for something you can’t quite grasp but yet you still desire it. Joy and Beauty create this longing in us.

I call these things my Little Story. What’s really interesting is that all of these concepts are just as much part of your Little Story as they are mine - I’d be hugely surprised if you disagreed with anything on that list. You and I might hope for different things and find joy in different things, but Hope and Joy feel the same for you as they do for me. We don’t invent these forms - we discover them, stumble across them, dig them up by mistake sometimes. But they are archeological, not architectural. And they are non-material, not measurable by apparatus, not repeatable by scientific experiment. They are doors in the walls of the physical world.

More than that, these qualities tend to be noticeable by their absence as much as by their presence. You know you believe in Unconditional Love when you feel rejected. You know you believe in Purpose when it seems as though your life is going nowhere. You know you believe in Freedom when you feel trapped - being trapped is simply the absence of Freedom.

These basic experiences pointed me to something beyond myself. They were symbols of identity. Now this is interesting: the word ‘symbol’ comes from a Greek term symbolon. In the ancient world, a symbolon was a clay seal which was broken in half and split between two people as a sign of identity. When the two halves were brought together, the true identity was recognised. So Love and Hope and Beauty and Freedom are symbols of identity, but I desired to know where the other half was, to satisfy my sehnsucht.

Continued below...

Words, just as much as universes, have origin stories. The word ‘desire’ itself comes from ‘de sidere’ meaning ‘from the stars’, while the word ecstasy derives from ‘ek stasis’ meaning ‘outside yourself’. Even as I started wanting to know where these concepts pointed, the desire itself was a signpost in the right direction - a sort of spiritual sonar. There’s that well-known trope from science fiction, found most notably in the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind, where our human satellites suddenly pick up on a signal from outer space; a signal which is distant, invisible, but somehow recognisable, somehow aimed at us.

Or, as Gandalf says to Frodo in Lord of the Rings, ‘The ring wants to be found.’

was there a Big Story somewhere that made sense of my Little Story?

And so what I wanted to know was this: was there a Big Story somewhere that made sense of my Little Story? And if so, which? What did these doors in the walls of the world open onto? When faced with the vastness of the universe and all its tangled ideas and phenomena, our response might well be one of curious baffledness. But none of us believe nothing. We all believe lots of things. Rene Descartes, regarded by many as the father of modern philosophy, believed that some things really could be known for certain. He scaled it down to the first principle of ‘I think, therefore I am.’ But I think we can go further. I love and hope and desire, therefore....something.

Off I went on my stuttering quest, setting off in search of real meaning and not just well-worn mottos or verbal placebos or family tradition. I went hunting for treasure...and stopped at a small hill in first century Palestine where X marked the spot.

I came to the conclusion that, actually, there’s only one Big Story out there that comes anywhere near to making sense of my Little Story, and as frustrating as that was for me, it’s the story of Christianity.

How many Gods offer to suffer with and for you? One.

I went hunting for treasure...and stopped at a small hill in first century Palestine where X marked the spot.

How many Gods tell you that they love you unconditionally, no matter what you have done? One.

How many Gods tell you that you actually can experience true forgiveness, so that the stuff you've done wrong and the stuff that’s been done wrong to you doesn’t get to win and have the final say? One.

That you actually can be free and know God personally? One.

That you should think death feels unnatural because it wasn’t meant to be that way and it won’t be like that in the end? One.

It’s all the same God. And his name is Jesus Christ.

Christianity is exclusive. It’s exclusive because it excludes all the other Big Stories where there isn’t a God willing to suffer with and for you, where your cries of pain are either unheard or unheeded. Christianity is exclusive because it rejects every Big Story in which the Creator of the universe doesn't say you’re worth dying for.

Frankly, I’ll take that kind of exclusivity. And maybe you should, too, my friend?