As I’ve been searching for the why and the how of the world we live in today, trying to wrap my head around all that’s happening, an answer bubbled up like the prophetic triangle in a Magic 8 Ball.
Words are meaningless, meaning is arbitrary
Yes, words are meaningless, and meaning is arbitrary. It all depends on your mind-space, like a compass pulled one way or another depending on your current emotional and mental environment. Dark, blustering anger and cynical despair will be attracted to more of the same, as will light-filled openness and hopeful acceptance.
Actually, everything human-made is arbitrary if you really think about it. 1 + 1 = 2 only because someone somewhere down the line assigned those symbols and values. But it could just as easily have been 2 + 3 = 1, or even $ x # = 1, if symbols and values were assigned differently. Similarly, each of us sees and experiences the world uniquely and, as a result, has unique needs, preferences and goals for moving through life. This means, something is only meaningful to a person if they believe it is based on their needs, preferences and goals. For example, golf used to be meaningless to me. I couldn’t care less about it, until I spent a day with my uncle, learning from and connecting with him over a golf lesson.
Meaning is as fluid as it is arbitrary. Take, for instance, the Renaissance age. Women with voluptuous, curvy bodies were the cultural epitome of beauty. Over time, that morphed into a stick-thin, bony figure sporting a thigh gap in a bathing suit, and then again to a muscular, athletic physique.
But what does any of this have to do with the state of our world? The arbitrariness of meaning/value/relevance means that any decision made for the mass of us is going to fall short in some way. Implementing one plan for every person cannot work. There is no “all or nothing” in this existence, as much as we want there to be. Continuing to live in this incongruence will never allow us to achieve the balance we need: We are like any other organism on this planet in that we require symbiosis to survive and thrive.
Even parasites know when to let go
Lately, my soul throbs with sorrow, anger and disappointment. From where I stand, it seems the human species is highly evolved in so many ways and yet archaically ignorant in so many others. All of this arguing, fighting, defending and offending are the mythological snake/dragon biting its own tail (ouroboros) or Buddhism’s wheel of samsara (live, suffer, die, repeat). I have a strong hunch that if we were to review all of our history, we wouldn’t find any stable resolutions achieved through hate, fear and vengeance. They certainly bring about changes, and drastic ones at that, but with dire consequences for too many people.
This incongruence we’re living in is fed by fear; the fear of others extinguishing our essence, our existence, in order to proliferate their own. It’s parasitic. But even a parasite innately knows that in order to survive, it can’t eradicate its hosts. Then, it too would die out. There has to be a point at which both are able to achieve a balance, where the parasite may strain some vitality but not cause death. It’s not always pleasant; one must give while the other takes. But it’s also not eternal, and the one taking eventually has what it needs, then it lets go and moves on.
We are not parasites (although environmentalists would probably disagree), but we are similar in that we rely on one another to live well and to work through difficulties. One gives while the other takes; each of us is constantly rotating through these roles during our lives, ebbing and flowing between strain and vitality. No one person or group of people can have it all. I can’t force the world and my experience of it to be everything I want it to be. It’s not possible. In the natural order of things, there is always something that doesn’t quite fit into the plan.
A mosaic of possibility
Instead of a seamless, perfectly proportioned square, why can’t we create a mosaic? Each individual but equally worthy and beautiful piece comes together to forge an awe-inspiring resolution. One piece never loses its own or annihilates another’s self-expression. All of those individual occurrences of vibrant, unparalleled self-expression are what we need to compose a holistic, living, constantly morphing work of art that allows for change and infinite possibility.
In this mosaic, opposing sides are able to simultaneously live in accordance with their own moral compasses. Any boundaries are flexible. They may be straight in some areas and then billow, ripple and roll in others, leaving space for those factors that don’t quite fit in with the general plan. And there will be circumstances that fall outside those boundaries. This is life.
Have you heard of the trolley dilemma? (Watch it here. I like this version from TV show The Good Place.) It does and it will happen. In these impossible situations, we can only act as compassionately as is possible. We seek the greatest good for the greatest number of people based on the knowledge and tools we have in the moment. Beyond the direct effects of our compassionate action, I believe there are even more, possibly greater benefits for all of us, even though we may not be able to see them in the moment. If we are unable to do this, we are the parasite that doesn’t know when to let go — and, eventually, we die out.
Everything is meaningful and meaningless at the same time
Despite knowing all of this, I’ve been struggling with one of don Miguel Ruiz’s Four Agreements: “I do not take anything personally.” It’s very hard not to when you feel that your rights, your life, and those of your loved ones, are being threatened. But then that is the crux of the problem — taking everything personally. That’s what leads us to fight, argue, condemn and even kill. We’ve been doing it for as long as humans have existed. And where has it gotten us? We’re running in circles. We’re biting our own metaphorical tails. We’re a pendulum swinging from one extreme to another and back again.
For now, in this moment of my life journey, I believe my task, my work, is to step away from the fight and go in search of whatever peace, balance and clarity I can find. This doesn’t mean I will ignore or deny the issues that matter for myself and my loved ones. I am, however, going to utilize means that don’t involve fighting, because that’s just a hamster wheel of futility.
My point is that you can have your truth, and I can have mine. No one can know everything, and no one can predict the future. No one can say for sure what will happen if one choice is made over another, or whether the result will be good or bad. As Timber Hawkeye explains, “The opposite of what you know is also true.” Two people can have directly opposing beliefs and still be “true,” because truth is subjective. It changes according to time, place, knowledge, maturity and experience.
Try it. Flip around all of your beliefs. Is the opposite also possible, and possibly as equally significant to someone else, maybe someone whom you care deeply about? And how is that opposite belief harming you or threatening your own life and how you live it? If it’s not, then it’s fruitless to fight over it.
What’s the point?
Exactly! That’s my point. What is the point of arguing, fighting, oppressing and even killing to get what one wants? Sure, someone might achieve it — almost never exactly, though — for a while, but it never lasts. The interim is filled with fear and any number of other negative, excruciating emotions. Then, it changes, often in an undesirable direction, accompanied by more suffering and fighting, over and over until the day of death.
One can never fully control another, anyway, because we all have the gift of choice. We can choose to do what we know is best for us and our loved ones, again, based on our own experience of life as well as our current knowledge, awareness and capabilities. Even when caught in a circumstance that we don’t know when or if it will end, we have a choice. As hard as it may be, we have the choice to be miserable about it and continually punch the brick wall in front of us, or to find our way to an inner peace that can never be taken away (still working on this one!).
Once we make a choice, we must live with the consequences. That’s the natural order of life. Consequence is the universal judge of action. No matter what anyone else says or does, that’s the final judgment in any situation, because we must live with the consequences of our individual choices.