Authentic Experience and the Crisis of Meaning

I have been struggling lately with the broader contours of my life. As one might pick up from previous posts, I feel I’ve hit a plateau of sorts, and the flatland is boring. I’m doing some relatively interesting (and soon to get quite exciting) things with my profession, and I’m getting pumped about hitting the next level, going to Paris for this conference at the end of August, and generally making a splash.

That’s fun, but I don’t feel like it truly speaks to my greater Crisis of Meaning, the continuing work of becoming that which I was born to be, the discovery and pursuit of destiny.

There are definite steps that can be taken on this path, steps which are simple and obvious. I can get a haircut and loose 10 pounds. I can eat better and drink less. I can begin writing seriously again, start paying closer attention to the workings of the world.

Indeed, pending inspiration, it would be pretty easy to swap out the four of five hours of crappy TV I end up watching a week for a few thousand words that mean something. If I were moved to get involved, I could quickly go beyond the high-end infotanement of bloggers and The New Yorker, actually get my hands dirty.

It’s these “pending inspiration” and “get involved” parts that vex, that lie at the heart of the Crisis of Meaning. This phrase is one of me and my teenage friends’ old philosophical concepts, our personal understanding of the concept of Anomie.

Our times are interesting, unique. While there’s plenty of wisdom in books and in sayings, the old norms do not cleanly apply. Role models are virtually nonexistent. We are making it up as we go along, the only option we really have available.

My cohorts are increasingly making progress on their individual paths towards familial establishment — a progress which I celebrate and encourage as I break my own trail through the fields of careerism. We move in directions that take us further from one another, both in literal physical and in mental space. As our accomplishments mount, our authentic experiences diverge. This is a cause for joy and for sorrow.

I’m fond of bandying about words like “destiny” and the like, and I do so honestly. I believe in free will of course, but I also believe in an great purpose to life, an enormous debt we owe the future, to each-other. I have and likely never will be satisfied with limited accomplishments.

Here on my hill in the trees, the early afternoon fog lifts and the sun shines in. I sit in my room at my desk on my persian rug, listening to some Hindu chanting music to the smell of nag champa. I am hung-over from a night around a fire at the beach, burning a palette, a men’s retreat into the sea-cave. Headached, I peck away at this blog post, procrastinating the work I need to do before Monday morning comes. I send a slender note to a beautiful woman I met in Uruguay. I have the house to myself. In moments like this, I feel there’s little choice but to await revelation.

The future is uncertain, but I’m confident that the end is nowhere near.