Meaning

It is because he is a wood carver that he thinks this way. Whatever tool he might use, the wood carver knows the surest way to shape the wood is by single strokes and cuts. He has to be slightly ahead of himself. He has to prefigure the process and the material. He has to learn to “listen and learn” from the wood itself. The wood decides what it wants to be. There are certain cuts it will not allow. And so forth…

And so in his late age he has grown into a patient man. Even with such an issue as meaning, he is still a patient man. Ask him what he thinks is the meaning of life and he might reply: If I knew, would I still be here?

No, he does not know the true meaning of life. At best, he has only an inkling of it. But it is a good inkling and it guides him enough so he can continue with life knowing with a sureness that eventually this full meaning will come to him, most likely when he is dead looking at life from a truly disinterested distance.

For now, he struggles with himself to be as good an artist as he can be. He instructs his students to be as good an artist as they can be also so that if the point in their lives should ever come when they understand the true meaning of life, they will by then be sufficiently learned and skillful to teach this to others.

This thought leads him to ask: If he should ever understand the meaning of life, would it be true for another person besides him? Would this meaning be universal? And if it were, is it really possible to convince any one else of this? Is it rather more true that the meaning of life would be a personal secret such as a man could not really share effectively with others?

He is more inclined to think that the meaning of life changes with each passing day, or with the seasons, or with his age as a human being. And he reminds himself always to be conscious of the fact his meanings result from his exposure to life in the day to day. Drawing meanings from his experiences is not difficult for him. He is after all an artist. To draw and produce meanings is inherent in what he does.

The discussions of meaning are commonplace in the artistic discipline. Artists know about things like “layers of meaning.” Meaning can be literal or abstract, or it can be both. Meaning might be the purpose of the artwork. Knowing fully well that it is the nature of the human mind to make sense out of even senseless things, the artist might leave the meaning of the artwork to the observer or reader. Even when the artist does not put meaning into the artwork, it might still be there. Meaning in art is such a wonderfully complicated thing.

And so too the meaning of life itself.

We are of course biased towards a meaningful life, the life led with a purpose. But this should not preclude for us the intrinsic beauty of simple survival in itself. Thus, the narrative of a poor farmer’s life might simply involve the long and arduous task of plowing a field. But who is to say this life is less important or less meaningful than the life of one who becomes president or king?

Meaning surely transcends the issue of a person’s station in life. It might be better interpreted along the moral or ethical line. Is a person’s goodness meaning in itself? In a world caught up as it is in the most corrupt, materialistic and success-oriented value system, could it be the person’s integrity, ethical and spiritual strength, and simplicity, which are the best measures of the meaningful life?

It is clear, the meaning of life is not something that can be stated into a single easy statement. It might be better defined by what is not meaningful, what is trivial as opposed to what is important.

But there again, the required subjectivity. In the end, the best answer may be the safest answer of all: It is only that we search for meaning in our lives that our lives are meaningful.