Road of Meaning
6 AM until 9 PM, a full day of work finished, without a sip of water or spoon of food. Energy steps the brake on the highway. A sudden silence. Then, I am alone again. It is the time for a new forced attempt of search-for-meaning.
I went on a distant walk. Long enough to create a void for the wandering mind. Set it free, and see where it leads.
Endless Road
My life, fortunately, is almost never threatened by hunger, cold, or death. The only omnipresent question has posed on me is the meaning of existence. A few answers have been proposed briefly for certain period of my life. They carried me walk through some critical turns in 15th, 22nd, 30th. However, the absence of an answer is the major theme. It is the biggest punishment.
Deep sorrow. Great emptiness. It comes back again when nothing else is occupying.
In Jewish Museum Berlin, the artist constructs a deep, cold, dark concrete silo with a small window at the top, named as Void. There is nothing but an empty space, symbolizing the state of lives and minds in the camp.
a man’s suffering is similar to the behavior of gas. If a certain quantity of gas is pumped into an empty chamber, it will fill the chamber completely and evenly, no matter how big the chamber is. Thus, suffering completely fills the human soul and conscious mind, no matter whether the suffering is great or little. Therefore, the “size” of human suffering is absolutely relative.
Either passively or actively seeking solitude is one of the consequences of suffering from the absence of meaning. Solitude is a quest to search for meaning. Every day, there are millions of quests from everywhere that lead people to go on a journey. It can lead us to a work or creating things; it can lead to someone who guides or accompanies us; it can lead to an attitude that is able to bear the unavoidable sufferings. The first two are like dependencies. They are easy to get and also easy to lose. The last one is challenging to find, and its existence is also hardly distinguishable from surrendering.
Noises
I am actively searching for loneliness. It is painful. The sorrow sneaks in with any chance. Buses, trains, and airplanes bring me so fast from one place to another, leaving the brain with no time and space to think and feel like water pushes the bubbles from a bottle.
Days were slower in the past.
Carriage, horse, and mail did not reach fast.
You need your lifetime to just love the person who is right.
The lock was fine in the past.
The key was exquisite and fit.
You lock and he will get it.
Now is too fast and too much. Activities to go through the day, notifications from phones, quick interactions with people on the street, working extra hours during weekends, and staring at midnight TV shows are noises to fill the empty mind. They are like dots on a picture, noisy and random. They prevent the mind from worrying, from caring, and from planning. They keep their minds in the moment. Speaking of which, the Snow is an unintentional masterpiece in the analog TV era. It creates something out of nothing.
But how to distinguish the real signals out of noise?
Down to Earth
What was really needed was a fundamental change in our attitude toward life. We had to learn ourselves and, furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life—daily and hourly. Our answer must consist not of talk and meditation but of the right action and the right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks it constantly sets for each individual.
Big life changes, like great success or defeat, vanquish all your hopes. Attitude is the key to re-entering life.
Living in a hotel room for more than a month is a new experience. It simplifies life to its maximum. The known choice is minimal in a completely unknown city, with an unfamiliar environment and basic living options.
How to live under the mismatch of external and internal life?
Two long reports, one in 2001 and the other in 2024, depict an unusual woman living a usual rural life in a distant village. She buys, reads books, and cooks for a big family. She tried to escape from the small village, but still went back home to take care of the old parents. She wore rosy red while working in the fields. She talks about poets, philosophy, and Dostoevsky when her husband went playing cards.
However, the most remarkable comment about her life from herself writes, “I questioned, I wondered throughout my life, and never a day had I stopped thinking about the ultimate meaning of existence. I fear not knowing. And when you ask how I am doing now? I am really good at farming! I work on my 10 acres of corns and wheat, and they are the best of the region.”
I am happy for her. I am happy for a nonstop seeking life that still has a root on the earth. It is not an act to solve the question for good. It is one of the million attempts with every facet of life to answer a simple yet complicated question.