encode_decode,
First of all, I must tell you how very much I am enjoying sitting in your Zen garden, surrounded by all of this beauty, this silence and stillness. It almost seems a shame for us to speak in here at all.
Oh, I would appreciate it if you could offer me a nice tall glass of lemonade with lots and lots of ice~ if you please.
How does one derive meaning in/from their life?
I recently saw the move Dunkirk. What an awesome movie it was. I literally sat on the edge of my seat during most of it. I don’t really want to give anything away since some may want to see it. It IS a movie well worth the seeing. But that is my perspective.
There was a scene in the movie where 700 non-military private ships (that was the reality though I don’t think we see all those ships on the screen) went out…
When 400,000 men couldn’t get home, home came for them
It was absolutely awe-inspiring and heartrending. My heart was in my throat. The tears would just not stop coming. Meaning for me was within those tears.
You asked how does one derive meaning in one’s life? What gives your life meaning?
These were people from all walks of life, down to a boy of about age 14, 15…
They came for these men, to rescue them.
They put their lives at risk. Courage under fire is one of the most meaningful, beautiful things in the world to me. I also experienced it with the movie Hacksaw Ridge.
A scene of such human solidarity brought on as a result of all of these people coming together is meaningful and beautiful to see.
Perseverance and the will to move forward DESPITE all danger (and oh was there ever danger) obstacles and odds in order to save other human beings is something beautiful and meaningful to see.
You could see many of the people standing on their boats. Their faces, registering such looks of determination and quiet courage, to get to those men ~~ were meaningful and beautiful to see and more than that, to experience.
I cried me a river. This was a moment when humanity was at their very best and a moment where I felt so proud to be a human being. There can be great meaning in that. That is when Life reaches to the heights even though there was also great tragedy seen there.
I think that what it is, or may be, which allows us to derive/experience such real meaningfulness in life are the other opposite-sides- of- the- coin, meaninglessness moments, moments when we are or may be deeply ashamed to call ourselves human, moments which show us man’s great inhumanity to man. I think that without the One, we could not experience the Other so profoundly.
William James said that the greatest use of life is to SPEND it for that which will outlast it. That is really something to ponder, I think.
Moments like this, this movie, or Hacksaw Ridge, or other real and vital moments in history when human beings have stood together in solidarity, to show such inter-connectedness, to save relative strangers rather than to destroy them ~~ are moments which bring profound meaning, real meaning into Life.
Sorry for my redundancy.