Purpose
A friend of mine recently wrote that death is the only thing that is real. I am not sure she meant it, but it has stuck with me these last couple of weeks. The word real seems linked to other words, words like important, meaning, and purpose. They are words that can mean a lot, or nothing at all.
Real to me is simply that which I can sense or can comprehend. The real can come from outside, like rain, or from inside, like love. However that occurs, whatever else I miss, that is my best definition of real.
But deciding what is real doesn't make reality important. It doesn't give reality or life any meaning, or purpose. I know many people with a great deal of reality do not have much meaning or purpose in their lives. Maybe they don't need it, or don't care. Maybe they do not think is those terms at all.
But me, I think meaning and purpose are important. I think they are important to us as individuals and to those around us. I am not going to be John Glenn, or I would be riding rockets into space already. I am not going to be a tortured artist, or, like Caravaggio, I'd be painting while dodging the law. But I find myself risking, creating, needing to do... something... to share with others to make myself real. It is not enough to do something just for me. That sharing, the moving outside myself, gives me the purpose and meaning and richer reality I feel I need, deep in my bones.
Do we care what other people think? Often. Should we? The easy answer is no. But what if we should? What if part of purpose is to connect, to get, if not approval, then perhaps support from others? and to give it? Is there something in our social animal construction that needs that connection to thrive, to come to grips with all we have to face in life? I think so. That no man is an island cliché has some meat on it. It isn't that we need the support of everybody, but some, some intimate few, are enough. Those few may be all we need throughout our lives.
Perhaps it is like the difference between sex and masturbation. Self love is ok, but the connection and passion of intertwined bodies rises above any singular moment. The purposeful actions we take to reach out to others creatively or intimately can make our individual moments more bearable in a hundred ways. The resultant feeling of contributing, from ourselves and in ways of our own choosing, to another is heady stuff. The act alone sometimes is necessary, regardless of its acceptance.
But, not being a pioneering astronaut or a talented baroque artist, I figure any contribution of mine will be small. I will make poetry, and write my essays, and share a mish mash of ideas and facts and dreams with any poor souls crossing my path. I hope my contributions will exist just long enough in the minds of others to bring a smile, raise hope, spawn dreams beyond mine or thoughts deeper than I've managed. Through that, I will not only achieve my purpose, but also be a channel for the contributions of others who have given of themselves to me. It will make them more real to me.
4 March 2003