The personal journey I documented in my previous post was, at its heart, a struggle to rekindle meaning in the face of axiom altering change.
When a deeply rooted mode of being is ground to dust by the relentless assault of change, meaning goes too. The only way back is down. Down to the axiomatic foundation. Down to the archetypal belly of the whale. Only from there can internal order and meaning be restored. Much hinges on how we understand our circumstance. During the sixteen months that followed my son’s adoption I had to confront this question head on.
People who have survived a close encounter with death often credit the experience with permanently deepening their appreciation for life. In my own search for renewed meaning I stumbled into something extraordinary. I discovered that sufficiently deep reflection on the improbability of one’s own life has a similar effect. I am alive only because of an unbroken, three-and-a-half-billion-year chain of survival. The odds are beyond comprehension. The fact fills me with awe and gratitude. That I was born with the privilege to know this only adds to my bonanza. I am the survivor of near death experiences beyond counting. How will I spend what remains of my improbable, lucky life?
The more integrated this perspective has become, the more meaning seems pervasive. It is corrosive to pretense, vanity, and bitterness. It is an anchor to reality that smashes through the fog of apathy and denial. It demands presence and truth. It imbues even the most menial with meaning.
I now chart my course emboldened by this view of my circumstance. My daily reflections seem to track four overlapping dimensions: truth, responsibility, sovereignty, and embodiment.
Truth begins with a commitment to tell the truth, to others, and especially to myself. It means valuing truth over victory; steel manning*, not straw manning; assuming good faith; thinking and speaking in a manner that strengthens; never using words instrumentally to manipulate or harm; and remaining open to changing my mind in light of better information.
Responsibility extends to taking responsibility for everything I reasonably can; for doing what needs to be done. It means accepting that every person is saddled with terrible burdens, voluntarily shouldering my own, and rejecting the easy path of victimhood. Responsibility means sacrificing in the present to secure the future. It means understanding that in our society money represents life energy**, and treating it accordingly.
Sovereignty*** consists of my ability to perceive, make sense of, and act effectively in response to the world around me. It is closely tied to the other dimensions, particularly responsibility. By taking responsibility I place myself in a position to respond rather than to react. Sovereignty ends where independence, reactivity, ideological possession, and emotional dysregulation begins. Sovereignty requires starting with myself, with that for which I can reasonably be responsible. The essential heuristic is: always act within the existing scope of your sovereignty, or to upgrade your sovereignty. Action beyond that courts disaster.
Embodiment refers to living out the ideas and ideals I’ve abstractly, hopefully reasonably, arrived at. Embodiment means being fully present and doing the things that make for a joyful, rich life. Fully embodied, there is no discontinuity between ideas/beliefs, and lived reality; no gap between who we are and who we’d like to be. The goal is so lofty as to always remain aspirational. Embodiment is tough for me. I find abstract ideas so real that I lack the incentive to put them into practice. And, only by acting them out, can I discover whether or not they are adaptive and life affirming. Living a rich, embodied life is now a primary goal.
No doubt, my map toward meaning will continue to evolve, and will never be complete. And that is how it must be, because meaning cannot be decoupled from seeking.
Deliberative Dad 