Escaping the Vacuum

As children, what do we make of our lives? Are we haunted in the day by the shadow of our own demise? Do we lie awake at night weighing our purpose against the expanse of the universe? Does the mirror still our bones, does it break the complacent concentration of our outward gaze and all at once present us with the parameters of our own existence? I dare say our minds are capable of such quandary sooner than we may be conscious of, but in youth we escape the weight of their consequences. We may find ourselves burdened by material desire or simply the desire for a few more moments of unfettered freedom, for five more minutes. If we were questioned as to the meaning of our lives and we refrained from deferring to the judgement of our parents then we would likely reply with a literal account of our current actions or circumstance.

“I doubt whether a doctor can answer this question in general terms. For the meaning of life differs from man to man, from day to day and from hour to hour.” – Viktor E. Frankl

This is because our lives as children occurred in a vacuum of innocence and non-consequence; we were raised in an incubator overseen by our parents and educators. This vacuum simulated moments so fleeting that some escape even our own memories. There was a lack of permanence to our station and so a lack of consciousness of the nature of our arrival or path. Of course I reference my own childhood which precedes the overwhelming influence of technology and information. Children are becoming their own overseers; they are becoming their own teachers with no regard for the consequences of knowledge. The innocence of childhood may fall with this infinite information on a foundation of sand; upon an unsteady mind it may all be misguided or lost. However, I digress. When the time comes that we leave our parents and begin to erupt in an anxiety for the infinitely forked road before us, we now ask ourselves what that road means. If we are not lucky enough to defer to a blind passion for our career choice or current educational journey we may falter for the first time in jarring fashion. If we are not one of the saved who have jumped from one vacuum of deference to the next then we may find ourselves feeling the first tug of undertow on the lip of a most dangerous vacuum; the existential vacuum. If we cannot surmise a mission statement from our stuttering then we will slip into the infinite unknown. Here we are stricken with the full weight of our meaning and the purpose of our choices that cannot be reprieved by some taskmaster. It is clear that though we may secure a rope beyond the edge of such a void, it is liable to fray, the knot is liable to slip, as with our childhood. We must constantly test the integrity of our support and adjust accordingly. Thus we are offered three different ropes with which we may test a great deal of knots.

“According to logotherapy, we can discover this meaning in life in three different ways: by creating a work or doing a deed; by experiencing something or encountering someone; and by the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering.” – Viktor E. Frankl

You may think this categorization makes the burden no lighter, but we’ve no need to carry our burden anywhere, we are welcome to continue living with such a weight resting comfortably on the inevitability of its resolution. Can we not start by believing in this? That our meaning may present itself to us in time and even that it must? In living we search, we may even find without knowing we’ve arrived or that we were seeking in the first place. Even if we go our entire lives without feeling some profound sense of meaningfulness, it is said that hindsight is 20/20. When we lay upon our deathbeds and our lives are bound in pages before us, then we may find it appropriate to assess the nature of our meaning and the accuracy of our trajectory, for it is too late now to change. Neither living nor dying has time for worry; living too vital, dying too irrevocable.

“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.” – Friedrich Nietzsche