One summer when I was five I took a very long car ride that lasted about six days. I sat in the cabin of a U-Haul truck with my dad while my mom and brother trailed behind us in the Toyota Corolla.
Throughout the trip from Baton Rouge to San Jose, I remember only feeling drowsy and sweaty the entire time. There were no conversations, no music, nothing--except the feeling of a long hazy daydream, like when you have the flu and stay home from school. I don’t even remember ever checking into a hotel room so we must have driven through the nights and took naps in the car.
But my one conscious thought that I do remember, was pondering the meaning of life. And then, when the U-Haul stopped moving and we pulled into our first gas station in San Jose, I felt like I knew. Eureka.
Children studied hard so they could go to a good college to get a good job as adults. Adults worked jobs to start families. And grandparents exist to help with (and spoil) the kids. The End.
Forever after, when I heard that the question of the meaning of life was a stumper, I felt incredulous. I had it all figured out by age 6.
But now I realize that I had gained that definition by osmosis from my parents and the popular culture of the 80's. And it isn’t true. It isn’t nearly the whole truth of the matter at all.
Though it is probably considered progress to find out you don't know what you thought you knew, I can't help but feel I'm regressing. Two more decades and who knows what other foundations will be demolished?
4 comments:
sort of depressing isn't it? sometimes it seems like getting through life is more about brute survival instinct than any "meaning."
My thoughts exactly...
...and I would expect no less from "my thought twin." ;-)
The meaning of life:
My grandmother knitting a quilt, would have told me that the meaning isn't relevant. Just as the meaning of the quilt she was knitting was irrelevant.
But can you find a purpose for yourself in an arena where there may be no rational meaning?
In the end, even the engineer's design is not marked by its creation, but by its consumption!
My Grandma and her quilts; whether they were meant for warmth or for decoration, they were for us to take comfort in our own way.
And just maybe, with all our guesswork and tribulations we find what was intended.
*Perhaps even more than was intended - that would have pleased my Grandmother. >_-
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