Monday, June 1, 2009

Alot of people think about meaning, morality, and spirituality.

I used to think about spirituality. That was when I was a firm believer. I thought about being connected to God, doing actions and thinking thoughts that would increase that connection. This was not supported by most of my rebbeim who saw that connection to God comes through learning Gemara b'iyun. I tried to combine the two, but I still tried to take my time during Amidah and turn at least parts of it into a deep meditation. Sometimes I had very interesting experiences.

Then, as I started to become more skeptical, morality began to take over the background of my thoughts. I wrote about this recently.

But I've never had time to think about meaning or purpose. I just wrote about what I think the purpose of life was, but I've never put much thought into it. Meaning seems so silly to me. I suppose I believe in the Taoist or Zen understanding of Meaning, namely just experiencing the moment. Meaning is inherently retroactive. If you are just living in the moment, you have no time to search for meaning. The moment you look for meaning, you are reflecting on your past, something that I don't make any time to do. I don't enjoy reminiscing and I don't feel the need to give my past experiences meaning.

If someone came to me looking for meaning, I'd tell them to read Frankl's book. I've read it a couple times... mostly on Tisha B'Av. That's about the only time I think about meaning and that's only because Frankl's book is sufficiently depressing to be read on such a tragic day in Jewish history, albeit with a positive outlook.

To be perfectly honest, meaning has no meaning to me. At this stage of my life, I'm too busy working, learning about different stuff that interests me at this point in time, working out, finding a girl, reading blogs, keeping in touch with people via facebook, twitter, texts, etc. that I have no time to think, "What is the meaning of it all?" The question just seems so absurd to me. I'm not sure if this makes me partly socio-pathic or just really lucky. Is existential angst akin to a psychological disorder or a feeling that any thinking human being feels.

Thanks to Mark (aka AcherHaKoton) for inspiring this post. To read his great post click here.