I’ve been looking for Meaning (the capitalization is deliberate), whatever that is, my whole life. I think we all do. I think that search for something larger than ourselves, that desire to feel that our lives Mean Something, is actually what animates most of our choices and actions. I’ve tried a bunch of different ways to find Meaning for myself, some more consciously than others, and since none of the spaghetti has yet stuck to the wall I’ve now started wondering if maybe I’ve had the definition wrong all along.

For a long time, Meaning – to the extent I thought about it, which was not much – was externally defined, derived, and delineated for me. I think that Meaning, and the search for it, is a preoccupation of middle age. It seems inextricably linked, in fact, to the growing awareness that our time here is limited. So when I was younger it was enough to accept the world’s validation and subtle cues about where I should go next. Actually the clues weren’t subtle, they were neon: find the most difficult thing, aim for it, and achieve it. In retrospect I feel like I was swinging between monkey bars of achievement, following a very clearly-marked path.

My father once told me my truest skill in life was doing just well enough to make it to the next level of whatever it was I was doing. I didn’t like hearing that at the time, but I think he was right. Talk of this “skill” was one of two themes I remember him talking about a lot in my childhood; the other was a constant, pressure-creating bemoaning of my lack of real passions. Of course I see now that these two traits are flip sides of the same thing. Without any real, singular passion, which is of course the road to Meaning, I had no idea how to figure out what to do other than to just do that which the world celebrated the most.

And so I did. And for a long time, it worked.

Until it didn’t anymore. I think the creeping sense that this mode of making life choices was no longer working was interwoven with my increased sense that I wanted to know what it all meant. Over time, as I had children and accessed depths of emotion I had not known about before, I started realizing that the real voice that would help me find Meaning was internal, not external. And my father’s words continued to echo loudly in my head. Passion. I must find my passion. Where is it? I have been on a frantic search, over the last few years, to find the Passion that will given Meaning to my life.

And I can’t find it. Not in people, not in books, not in motherhood, not in professional goals. The fact that I can’t find it causes me deep, inexplicable angst and more tears than I imagined were possible: what kind of black hole do I have where others have a soul, that I don’t have a life’s passion?

I am starting to suspect, and then accept, for me at least, there may simply be no single, central passion. Maybe there is just not going to be a lightning-bolt, thundering voice-of-god moment where I realize: this is it! It is scary, letting go of this belief. Because without the big a-ha of Meaning to wait for, what I am left with is now. This life. This series of days, woven out of the most mundane things, occasionally shot through with a glittering, golden thread.

Maybe it is simply that instead of a laser I am a kaleidoscope. Maybe instead of Meaning, for me, there is meaning. I know that sometimes I have moments of incredible, inchoate emotion, whose triggers I sometimes do and sometimes don’t understand. In those moments I have a sense that is the feeling equivalent of the sound of sails snapping in the wind or wings beating. And maybe I just haven’t realized, all along, that that is my meaning. Maybe when I feel those waves of oceanic blue joy around my ankles, their pebbles and flotsam of sorrow and hope and despair stinging my skin, that is, for me, the closest I will get to both passion and meaning. And those waves, that sense of being close to something bigger, something divine, often come in the smallest, most everyday moments. Those moments of my life I’ve missed so many of; moments I looked past, dismissing them as ordinary in my frantic search for Meaning. Perhaps, all along the meaning was both in the minute and in the minutes.

a woman, daughter, mother, sister, wife, friend, and writer.  I am also a runner,  a disillusioned MBA, a reformed nailbiter, and a proud natural redhead.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 4th, 2009 at 5:00 am and is filed under Meaning. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.