SEARCHING FOR MEANING TODAY

I used to think that there were two types of people in the world – those that believed in something beyond themselves and those who didn’t believe in anything. I felt lucky that I had faith in the future, a belief in God and beyond this, confidence that we as a species are here for a reason.

As I grew older I started to feel “If you don’t stand for something, you will fall for anything”. This quote attributed to a man named Gordon A. Eadie in 1945 and published in relation to the Second World War seemed true of many areas of life, not just why people are motivated by patriotism.

There was a time, not so long ago, when civilized educated people would be expected to share a common heritage and frame of reference. For example, various things such as what is commonly referred to as The Golden Rule was something almost all religions on earth paraphrased and incorporated into their own cosmology. Beyond this, civilized behaviour universally seemed to share a set of shared principles and values whatever culture one came from.

What constituted decent treatment toward our fellow human beings often translated from one culture to another without great discrepancies.

When I was in my late 20’s and early 30’s, I could still remind friends experiencing Divorce that regardless of how things seemed during the dissolution of their Marriage, there actually was a time when they and their partners had professed, and felt, love for each other. I felt, quite strongly that it was therefore untrue, in retrospect, to say that they had never loved each other, regardless of how little of this love remained.

The adjunct and extension of having loved someone was that each gave the other their trust, understanding and the benefit of a doubt that their thoughts and deeds arose from good will toward each other and caring and love.

Based on such an almost universal understanding and seeing many, many couples married to each other for life, I could ask my friends to remember they were (in our case) Christians. I would therefore ask them to do their best to behave decently toward their former partner. This meant working towards decent treatment of the other person, showing compassion, tolerance and remembering that their children deserved to have both parents participating in their lives.

Despite, the fact that the adult/parental partnership was being dissolved, we all wanted to come out of a bad situation with our Dignity intact and knowing that we had somehow remained true to who were purported to be as human beings.

I realize now that this might have been a tall order, but was not then considered impossible to achieve despite that in some cases, their Separation or Divorce being a situation which was often the first in their family in generations, if ever, excepting extraordinarily violent or abusive ones.

Today however, when every second marriage ends in Divorce, I have heard a dozen times that Widowhood and Divorce are the same. Those Divorcing say that both conditions require Mourning. To me, as a Widow however, no such parallel exists. The Widowed person would give anything to see the other partner again. The Divorced person, on the other hand, would usually give almost anything to never have to see their former partner again.

What changed? Was it we who changed? Was it our expectations of what a good life meant which altered?

I think possibly we did change. Whether it was because we as Women became convinced we could somehow Have It All. Was it perhaps that our giant Baby Boom and Generations Jones cohorts felt confident that we were going to be able to surpass all previous generations in our the quality of our lives?

Well, yes, if ‘having it all’ meant working all day and going home to all of the traditional obligations at home as well, then Women changed. One thing is certain, for good or ill, male or female, we certainly ended up with lives far different from those of our Parents and our Grandparents.

Most of us, for example, are either never Married, Married more than once or have decided to never be married again. Most of us therefore are likely to end up alone.

We differ from our parents and ancestors in that we have greater affluence and financial security. We therefore can support ourselves, indulge ourselves and experience a better life sooner than our parents ever could.

We can, if we want, leave our partnerships more easily than earlier generations could, because both financially and emotionally, we are more independent in both of these areas than were earlier generations.

Why then, do we keep on searching for satisfaction beyond ourselves in a new partner, or a new job/career, or a new financial or material goal or achievement? When did success start to be defined by what we have rather than what kind of people we are? To me these are the biggest dilemmas because most of them must be faced by each of us by ourselves and alone.

Our families are broken into nucleur units, often thousands of miles away. Many of them are estranged from us anyway because of earlier divorces, remarriages and stepbrothers and stepsisters.

To those who have never married and those of us who did, without having children, we can find some consolation as Aunts and Uncles but the connections with the younger generation are more tenuous than that of a Parent, regardless of how often we visit each other.

Man’s search for meaning might perhaps be something which each generation must discover for themselves. We may not be the exception to the need which philosophical thought has sought to resolve about the human condition throughout recorded history.

In our time, however, I wonder whether we will come to a satisfactory explanation for our existence or not. I hope each of us does ascribe some purpose and meaning to our lives. I think we as a species need such reassurance and it behooves us to find or make a place that gives us a base and home to call our own. Beyond this I hope we feel confident and successful in what we are accomplishing in the course of our Journey.

I end by wishing us all success in finding our raison d’etre. While will not be the first to strive to put meaning into our lives; we certainly need to do this more than most members of previous generations did because more of us are on our own than ever before. As previous generations did, we will also need to find a legacy to pass on to those following us.

I think much of what we have learned will communicate itself in interesting new ways in the coming years as we become older and look forward to seeing what our cohort finds important to pass on to later generations.