Serenade - a poem by John Fuller

This poem links in my mind with my post about the fear of death, 02:10:14; I hope Mr Fuller doesn't mind my reprinting in full his fine poem, which I found in The Spectator, 4th October 2014, page 24.


Come to the garden, that familiar place
Where life renews itself against all odds.
Untightening buds act out their memory,
And dying seems a momentray pause.

Our star that took an afternoon to sink
Hangs in reluctance from the darkening tree
Like an amused and philosophic eye
Penning his treatise of the out-of-doors.

We are the topics of his arguments,
Enduring his extemporised revisions.
We are reminded of our natural ends
And of our origins and of their laws.

The knotted plum has dared at last to bloom:
Its blossom has no other mind but yours.

The yellow spray will lean down just for you
And though its petals scatter, they are yours.

Twisted wistaria unfolds and falls:
Its violet is a passing thought of yours.

The carved magnolia tilts its head and lifts a cheek
That mimics the expressiveness of yours.

The visited and swooning clematis
Climbs like a conscious eagerness of yours.

Yours are the flowers dimmer than their air,
Whose perfume lingers like an old desire.

Come to the garden, where two glasses wait
And there's a chair beside another chair.
The liquid lifts and widens as it pours,
And evening has no other end but night.

                                      John Fuller

The Fear of Death - mindsets that might help.

I don't mean the natural (biologically-wired) drive to avoid death. Neither do I mean fears about the nature of our individual exits. I mean the sort of out-of-balance existential terror that some people feel deep down about the fact that 
(plot spoiler alert...) 
everyone dies.

"What, me? Now? But...but...but...

It seems to me natural to have some fear of death; one philosophical response is that of Epicurus: "where I am, death is not; where death is, I am not."

So the state of being dead should have no fears for us. But then Epicurus was evidently brilliant, with a strong mind, and he didn't seem to trouble himself about the ending of his consciousness, his personality, in death. What might help us lesser beings?

I have a friend whose practice is to be as close as possible to nature, all of it, natural forces, seasons, plants, animals. Not as in "oh what a lovely view," nature as a pretty backdrop.

More like Dylan Thomas' "The force that through the green fuse drives the flower/ Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees/ is my destroyer./ And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose/ I am bent by the same wintry fever." This helps her to see her own life and death as part of huge natural cycles, which may not ultimately be eternal but are as close to it as we can imagine. 

Another friend thinks we should make more of ancestors; our current egotiscal rage to "individualise" everything reinforces the view that we are alone and unique in time. Perhaps if we could see that we came from our forebears and pass on what we were to those who come after, we could feel readier to let go, to feel part of a pattern.

Yet another friend believes the ancestors are Right There with us. I don't, in any literal sense, but I can see the point.

I think many of us probably need something to help us relinquish our lives with the feeling that we are part of a pattern, a process, a reality greater than ourselves. There are those who say, again, along with Epicurus, "I was not; I was; I am not; I do not care." I haven't come across many who truly feel that.

I don't know if believing you have an eternal soul helps you to fear death less. I would guess that for some it does, and for some it doesn't. 

I hope, whatever you believe or think you know, that you find some way of reducing you own fear of death, because excessive death-fear can really mess your life up. Happily, it can be treated (see the excellent "Staring At The Sun," by Irving D Yalom.)

Fear of flying and Billy Collins

We all know, of course, that flying is statistically, extremely safe. The journey to the airport is potentially much more dangerous than the journey across a continent. So I'm not afraid of flying.
Intuitively, it should be terrifying; it's reason that subdues the fear, I guess. And - mind-numbing, uncomfortable boredom, but that's another topic.

I was relieved to find that I'm not the only one who also feels that underneath the mundane business of Gate no. 14, Flight no. etc, is an extraordinary reality, one that is potentially pretty damned terrifying!

And so characteristic of Billy Collins, the gentle comedy in the last two lines. He is such a wise, humane presence in my life, for which I'm grateful.

Passengers

At the gate, I sit in a row of blue seats
with the possible company of my death,
this sprawling miscellany of people—
carry-on bags and paperbacks—
that could be gathered in a flash
into a band of pilgrims on the last open road.
Not that I think
if our plane crumpled into a mountain
we would all ascend together,
holding hands like a ring of skydivers,
into a sudden gasp of brightness,
or that there would be some common place
for us to reunite to jubilize the moment,
some spaceless, pillarless Greece
where we could, at the count of three,
toss our ashes into the sunny air.
It's just that the way that man has his briefcase
so carefully arranged,
the way that girl is cooling her tea,
and the flow of the comb that woman
passes through her daughter's hair ...
and when you consider the altitude,
the secret parts of the engines,
and all the hard water and the deep canyons below ...
well, I just think it would be good if one of us
maybe stood up and said a few words,
or, so as not to involve the police,
at least quietly wrote something down.

Thanks, Mr C.

Dead Shorts part 2

I like these short prompts, because I find they've prompted me - or even amused me. Hope they work for you.


"It was never a great bird-puller at school." (Undertaking was the family business.)

"(At a funeral) we had to release two doves. So as they've gone up, out of nowhere this sparrowhawk slams into one of them and kills it. You shouldn't laugh, but I think even the family found that funny."
John T Harris, T Cribb and son, Undertakers in the East End of London


"People today are frightened by silence. There's a kind of inner loneliness. I think it's an agitated age. That's a comment, not a criticism."
Joyce and Ivan Fox, Crazy Coffins.


"The absence of a body is always a lot more difficult to deal with. If a place crashes, for example, it can be a help to visit the site. Seeing a body can be very helpful to the grieving process."

"For older people, the death of a parent can often seem unbelievable. They think their parents are immortal."
Joy Caplin, Cruse bereavement counsellor

"Funeral directors have a lot of dedication. I did it once. It's a difficult job; a messy one"

"You get advice about sex and drugs at school, but never death. People aren't taught and they haven't a clue."

"People shouldn't think they're being cheapskates when it comes to a funeral. I used to say to people, 'you can have that expensive coffin if you want, but we're only going to burn it."
Howard Greenoff runs Kingston Cemetery

"People try to find magical solutions when they are bereaved. A bereaved woman I knew married the best friend of her former husband just three months after her husband died."

"In my teens I was an ardent atheist. But after working in hospices I came into contact with strong religious beliefs and I am less judgemental. I don't have an easy answer but I respect that there are different ways of thinking."
Colin Murray Parkes, consultant psychiatrist at two hospices

All the above from "Get Dead," by Jamie Oliver, which as well as having fascinating mini-interviews with these and other people, is also full of remarkable facts.

Dead Shorts

My posts have been a bit wordy and chewy of late, so here for a quick and breezy go-through are a few deathly snippets clipped from  a fascinating little book called "Get Dead," by Jamie Oliver. (Not I presume, the celebrity chef?)

"Once you know about death you can never not know about it again."

"Families (of the dying) are often caught up with the symptoms and they forget about their relationship."
      Christine Klaus, clinical psychologist


"Death has been mystified by middle-aged men in suits. But death is the most natural thing in the world."
     Lucy Howard, who was then a trainee embalmer 


"People die of everything. I've seen fit and healthy people that have dropped down dead for no reason, and drinkers and smokers who live to a good age. I'll go my own way, thanks very much."

"I don't dislike anything about this job. I wonder if I'm sick in the head. They've tried to put me into counselling, but I don't need it. Well, I don't think I do!"
      John Shiels, senior mortician


"I've always wanted to do this job, from about the age of eight. I loved wearing black and sitting around in cemeteries. They're so peaceful."

"There's a lot of myths around dying. I think this job has taken away the fear. I don't think there's life after death."
       Sue Harvey, funeral director


"People say Buddhist funerals are happy occasions. But that's like saying going through labour doesn't hurt. It's bollocks."
       Penny Black, Buddhist celebrant


Maybe more little bites from the frontier next time.

The Balance part III (conclusion)

I think what I was trying to get at the other day is that people seem to need a way of feeling in balance; at home, in a profound sense. They want to feel linked to the rest of the world about them, and not just to human society; they want to feel a sense of unity with The Way Things Are.  

Aspects of physical and biological science can help us do that via reason. For example, the characteristics we share with other living creatures, the way the seasons work on us, or the wonders and mysteries revealed by astronomy. Such insights can lead to a fuller identification with the rest of the universe - e.g. some of the things Einstein wrote in later life. Sometimes such insights are labelled "spiritual," a complex and conflicted term these days perhaps.

Before scientific methodology and rational analysis, people found this harmony in ways that might not stack up rationally, but I think they can still have a symbolic beauty for us, and even, for some of us, a functional utility.

Astrology is, I think, not rationally supportable (which is a polite way of saying that at the literal level, I don't believe a word of it!)  However, sensible, bright people follow it, including a lovely colleague of mine. It's unwise to think that people who believe irrational things are foolish; patently not so. 

We should look at the purpose, function and symbolic eloquence of such systems as astrology, even if we don't accept them ourselves. I believe they help some people who are looking for a sense of balance and belonging, unity with the universe.  Edmund, the wicked bastard in "King Lear," says in effect "It's nonsense. I'd be lecherous and uncouth whatever stars reigned over my conception and nativity." He was a modern man in his day.  

I don't know enough about other cultures to generalise, but there is one well-known symbol of balance, the ancient Chinese Yin-Yang. Like many profound things, it is beautifully simple.

Thus saieth Wikipedia, helpfully I think:

In Chinese philosophy, the concept of Yin-Yang, which is often referred to in the West as "yin and yang," literally meaning "shadow and light," is used to describe how polar opposites or seemingly contrary forces are interconnected and interdependent in the natural world, and how they give rise to each other in turn in relation to each other.

Everything has yin and yang aspects, opposite dualities that are ultimately interdependent, different ways of seeing and understanding an inexpressible unity. The symbol may have become a cliché, but the mode of thought is fascinating, and I think productive. To risk stating the bleedin' obvious, you can't have light without dark, music without silence - life without death. These dualities are not opposed, they make up the one, even if we see first yin and then yang.

The Balance. Ever changing within us and without us. If you veer away from death, deny it in your life, you drain your life of meaning and intensity. If you are incapacitated by your (natural) fear of death, you darken your life.

The Balance is there all the time, you can't will it within yourself. You can't say "I will be mindful today," or "I will stop worrying about the end of my life." 

Meditation is one way to let The Balance emerge. But enough from me, on the way. You know what's coming next:

"The Way that can be named is not the perfect Way."

Meditating monkeys, internal thoughts, consciousness and fearing death.

Above gem of a pic from a fascinating BBC website story about research involving brain-scanning monkeys.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/wondermonkey/2011/06/do-monkeys-wonder-1.shtml

Seems to me that a fuller understanding of human consciousness is helpful in getting us to look more four-square at our own mortality. So enough already with the obvious jokes such as "Never mind brass monkeys mate, I can't even find it now." These, the most northerly human-related primates, are Japanese macaques. They go for a cold meditate when it's very hot, and they look for hot springs when it's cold. They wash their food in sea-water which cleans it and may even make it taste better.

But, wonderful though these kinship points are, something else and possibly quite profound has emerged. Researchers have found, via electronic brain scanning (calm down, it's harmless and it doesn't hurt), that these chaps have what the neuroscientists call a "default mode" of brain activity. Wow.

This default mode is the bit we slide into when we're thinking about ourselves and our state of mind or bodily well-being. It is our conscious awareness of self. For example, when we're sometimes just letting our thoughts drift along thus: "I must get a new tyre, maybe I'll go to the place where there's that tasty mechanic, who looks like the bloke who..anyway, that I'll do tomorrow, ouch that ankle is still playing up, bugger it's raining and the washing's out..." etc. (The Munday mind is a murky place at best, you've gathered by now.) Or looking back with happiness or regret, or foward planning.

The other bit, when we're focusing on hurrying to get the washing in, concentrating on not dropping too many pegs, even counting them, not drifting off into daydreams about tight jeans, not noticing that the ankle hurts, not verbalising or imageing apart from the task in hand - that's the focused bit, and it shows up as a different area of activity in the brain. Our self-awareness is, as I understand and feel it, at a low state of arousal when we are lost in a task. We talk of "losing ourselves." Recently bereaved people often like to keep busy, because it dulls for a while their painful self-awareness.

You'd expect these smart monkeys to be good in that focused area, as they hunt for their sushi and wash it in seawater. But "deafault mode?" Wow again. The scientists are wondering if monkeys can wonder too, maybe look back, maybe contemplate alternative future actions not just immediate reflexes, etcetcetcetc.

Let's not be sentimental. They can't talk (i.e. their sound communications are not a fully-featured symbolic system) - no, lady, your little bow-wow can't talk to you, however sweetly he responds. But he may be more self-aware than we'd realised. The macaques may behave in a distinctly ungentlepersonly fashion sometimes. But then so do we.

Human consciousness, awareness of self, is the bit that says to us "you're going to die one day," so we have to live with the dread of death before it arrives, and somehow come to terms with it. Sometimes it makes us behave better towards each other - in the words of the nearly immortal Randy Newman, "no more arse-grabbing, back-stabbing" or it's pitchforks and trombones, not harps and angels, for you - sometimes it drives us a bit crazy - see "Staring at the Sun" by Irvin Yalom, no apologies for another plug.

And these macaques? Wish I knew. Because if consciousness is a continuum, if it has evolved gradually through a progressively complex area of organisms and to some degree is spread around the natural world more than we thought, then (and I'm not sure why) I feel comforted. Not because any other creature might have to face some awareness of its future demise, but because - just because.

Our consciousness moves through the world, the world moves through our consciousness. We make our world out of our thoughts and senses, the world makes us think and feel like we do. And we are not entirely alone in this. It's all one. Tat tvam asi. What's to fear?

My brain hurts. I may run off to an ashram.

No monkeys were hurt in the making of this blogpost.

Mortality Dread - a celebrant glancing sunwards, however briefly

Stay with me, I'll show you a good time.....so: another chew at this sombre but who knows potentially liberating topic. If you read the previous jolly instalment, this post is fear of death part II, kind of, but I'm referring to the dread we naturally tend to feel about our upcoming end, i.e. the fact of our mortality, to separate it out from anxieties about how that event (death) might come about.

Still under the influence of (and in the middle of) "Staring At The Sun" by Irvin Yalom. In the book he uses case histories from his clients who have gone through existentialist psychotherapy for symptoms which turn out to be generated by their fears about their own mortality. He also uses helpful ideas from philosophers (Epicurus, Nietzsche) which he expresses very clearly, simply and concisely; he also writes about his own fears about death (he is well over 70.)

Yalom's title comes from the Maxims of de le Rochefoucauld: "You cannot stare straight into the face of the sun, or death."

Yalom is a very humane and wise man, full of compassion and insight. He expects each of us, and himself, to be carrying around a dread of the end of our self-awareness, but he argues - no, he demonstrates most effectively - that understanding the nature of our fears helps reduce them to a manageable level - occasional anxiety from time to time, perhaps, rather than the full-on terrors that some of his clients have been suffering from. He demonstrates that to avoid or try to bury our fears about the end of our lives will distort and spoil them. It is by understanding and accepting them that we can free ourselves, and enrich our lives.

And I know that there are plenty of people out there, certainly in the blogosphere around GFG, who would tend to agree with him. I certainly do.

It took me a suprisingly long time to realise that being a funeral celebrant has helped me in this area, for maybe three reasons:

1. It's not me in the box. That was a startingly crude realisation, and it is not, of course, why I took the whole thing on. To put it less bluntly, the sadness and compassion I feel feel for the end of someone's life and the grief of those they leave behind - however temporary my feelings may be - re-emphasises the extraordinary fact of my own self-aware life, in this present moment.

2. Related to the above, there is a certain de-sensitisation effect. Not to the fact of mortality itself, but to the trappings of funerals and funeralists. When I stood watching the coffin being unloaded at the first funeral I was involved in, I felt a touch of the tension and dread I remember at family funerals at that point. I hope it doesn't sound callous to say that now I deal with funeral directors, watching coffins, etc etc with equanimity, not dread. I'm usually too concerned about getting things right, and about the family. (Of course, I'm not at what you might call the sharp and messy end of all this, as FDs are.)

3. As someone who reckons there isn't an afterlife, writing words about the things that are left behind for us when someone dies, and trying to make such words as real and as honest as possible every time, has really made me think about mortality and belief. I'm less "either/or" about beliefs, more opposed to facile polarisations, more aware of the realities of other people's lives and beliefs.

So the work has given a very great deal back to me. But it is not always comfortable, because it involves at least looking towards the sun for a bit every now and then.

Yalom ends his book thus:

"I do not intend this to be a sombre book. Instead, it is my hope that by grasping, really grasping, our human condition - our finiteness, our brief time in the light - we will come not only to savor the preciousness of each moment and the pleasure of sheer being but to increase our compassion for ourselves and for all other human beings."

If you've read any of my ramblings, you'll see at once that he could easily be writing about mindfulness meditation.

Working on funerals has helped me at least glance sunwards, and has caused me to take up mindfulness meditation, which has helped me to glance sunwards, with benefit to myself and, I hope, to those I work for. It's turned out to be a suprisingly neat and unexpected equation.

Enough. It's tedious to be told to read a book someone else raves about. WTF: read the book.

The Fear of Death

OK, so having sorted out the meaning of life, sort of, I'd like to turn my over-simplifying attention next to the fear of death...well, I never said it would all be snowflakes and kittens. Never mind, I'll soon turn back to funerals, for a bit of light relief.

It's surely a biological function, an evolutionary priority, to seek to preserve one's life. Sometimes, people have managed to put that function aside and either risked or actually given their lives seeking to protect other people. We call them heroes, and are moved and astonished by their ability to put a moral choice and a willed action in front of their natural human fear.

They themselves tend not to use the word "hero," but say things like "I just found myself doing it," or "seemed what had to be done," or "just doing my job." Self-preservation can be put aside, but for most of us much of the time, it's a priority. In a comparatively safe society like ours, self-preservation can give rise to all sorts of neurotic stuff - the so-called "worried well," and if I catch myself thinking like that, I try to remember that the human body at any age is not perfectable and totally stable; health is relative, and OK at the moment is OK.

So most of the time most of us want to keep on living, unless we are very ill, profoundly unhappy and distressed, or just tired out and resigned. Because mostly, people fear death, or if they don't fear death, they fear dying.

"Staring at the Sun," by Irvin Yalom, opens with these enlightening words:

"Self-awareness is a supreme gift, a treasure as precious as life. ...But it comes with a costly price: the wound of mortality. Our existence is forever shadowed by the knowledge that we will grow, blossom and, inevitably, diminish and die."

That awareness, he explains later, can lead to various death-fears and anxieties which, if not looked at and faced, can cause all sorts of personal problems and tensions. And yet looking into one's own mortality, looking into death itself, is like staring at the sun - you can't do it for long.

His words quoted above linked, for me, to another insight from Dorothy Rowe: it is not so much a fear of death that haunts many people, it is much more the fear of the annihiliation of the self - in fact, the loss of self-awareness. Some people would say they would rather die than lose all sense of their own identity, (i.e. face the destruction of their personalities, their memories, their egos.) They might describe such states as a living death. (Sorry - but I said, no snowflakes and kittens...)

So maybe, with respect to Yalom (it's a tremendously worthwhile and helpful book, I've found) but maybe sometimes self-awareness is not as precious as life, it's more precious to us than life, since without it we don't see ourselves as fully alive. And Rowe looks at the way people will defend themselves against a perceived threat to their sense of identity (even if the threat is hardly or non-existent.)

So maybe to accept our own mortality, to deal with the dread death holds for us, we need somehow to come to terms with losing our self-awareness. (I'm beginning to find "dread" a more useful word than "fear," in this context.) I'm going to hold that idea, and come back to it in a moment.

Yalom uses the insights of Epicurus, who points out that death is a non-state. There is no individual awareness after death, just as there wasn't before life. We didn't exist before we were born, and (in a literal and basic sense) we won't after we die. So, nothing to fear about being dead. There's nothing there, and no "me" to know that there is nothing there. Or, like the Venerable Bede quoted in a recent Good Funeral Guide post, we simply cannot know anything about before and after life, even if - like Bede - we believe in an immortal soul. So, still, there is nothing to dread about being dead. There's no point in dreading a state of non-being.

Except - we have to come to terms with losing our self-awareness, our very selves. (Even if you believe in a soul, you will still surely have to say goodbye to yourself in this life as you are now.)

You've been waiting for that second boot to hit the floor, if you've read any of my meanderings before, so here it comes. For many of us - well, for me and I hope maybe for you one day - some reconciliation with mortality, with acceptance of the prospect of the end of me, some resignation, can come from mindfulness meditation. (Other kinds of meditation too, I'm sure.) And that's because while you are meditating, you achieve some relief from the demands of the ego, all the "what ifs," the "should haves," the "I'm gonna.." and you exist, as far as possible, just in the present. And when you return to the usual flow of thoughts, plans and worries, you may find an increased acceptance of your life, and of its inevitable end.

I'm pitching the mindfulness thing fairly low today; I could say that a meditative state puts one into contact with non-rational, profound states of mind (what non-believers still call "spiritual," lacking another term, or what some sorts of believers might call God) and that these states of mind are deeply rewarding, and yield calm, compassion and general well-being, even back in the onward flow of the old hurly-burly.

And this may help you to a view you'll find in a comment on my last posting, from Comfort Blanket, where she says: "What I do know for sure is that if there is one thing that gives life meaning, then that one thing is death. Because it puts things into perspective, brings them into focus, sharpens us up, gives us a limit on how much/how long...
So perhaps the meaning of life is death? Can it be that simple?"

Yup.

Only death can give life its meaning. We are here to be, we are not here "because"....or "so that"....
It is only not being here that makes being here possible, significant, capable of creating meanings.

The meaning of life is death, the meaning of death is life.

The other meanings, we create for and between ourselves.

The Meaning of Life

So nothing too demanding today, just a little excursion round the human lot.

The BHA is holding a national conference this summer in Manchester, with people who I think are interesting (Philip Pullman, AC Grayling, Polly Toynbee) although to avoid preaching to the (un) converted, maybe they could have asked a lively bishop, rabbi or suchlike along. Rowan Williams and Pullman would be a good gig, I'd guess.

Anyway, the title of the conference is "The Meaning of Life." The publicity stuff admits that maybe Douglas Adams is right, and that the question itself may even be meaningless, (but of course that's not the point, for a conference theme.) I think they are right, it is a non-question. I seem to remember that philosophers call this sort of thing a "category error, " which is to say that the question itself is mistaken, unanswerable, its terms won't and can't lead to a valid answer.

We don't ask "why is a blackbird?" It simply is. To ask "what is the meaning of life" is to say "why is a person?"

Some religious people might say that the meaning of life is to serve God, but if you don't believe in God, or at least, not in any sense in which serving a god could be a meaningful action, then that's no real answer. Or, the meaning of life is to go to heaven at the end of life, or at least avoid hell. But I've two probs with that outlook: 1) I don't share the necessary belief and 2) the question isn't "How should I live?" (i.e. virtuously, so you can go to heaven.) It's about looking for a meaning in the fact that people live (and so do earthworms, gannets, stinging nettles etc.) i.e. it's assuming that life itself has a meaning, because if my life has a meaning, then why shouldn't the life of a stinging nettle have a meaning? We're both equally alive.

To ask "what is the meaning of life' might be akin to asking "what is the purpose of life? We can devise our own answers to that question. i.e. "the purpose of my life is to make money," or "I didn't even know what the purpose of my life was till I met you, li'l darlin, can I buy youse a drink?" But these are constructs we decide for ourselves, they can't be general categories that can apply to any and all life, or even any and all human lives.

It seems to me, having read a bit, pondered in a simple sort of way, argued with a friend or two, that life simply IS. A life (mine, yours) is an event, or series of them, a process not a thing. Life itself is a particular arrangement of energy in the universe, distinctive from not-life. We can usually say "this thing here is a life-form, that thing over there isn't, never was and never could be. That's a pencil, this here is a Duke" (I'm aware there are a few tricky boundary things that are sort of a bit but not entirely alive, but just for now, lay off the picky stuff please, or I'll get a headache...)

Life reproduces and evolves, and eventually, here you are, and me too. For now. Because life is finite in any single of its multiple forms. So maybe it helps to see a life as a bit like a deep-sea wave (not a breaker, but an ocean swell.) Water (cf our body stuff) with energy passing through it, the energy lifts water up into a wave shape, then when the energy moves on, the same water subsides (the body dies. )The water itself doesn't move forward, it just settles back and the energy moves on. H'm, that might need a bit more thought. But I'll hang on to the idea that a person is body-stuff which is energised until it isn't any more, and the wave itself moves on.

So - life simply IS. A friend of mine criticises my views for being rationalist, reductive, not open to the wonders of God, I should trust my intuition and silence my ego etcetcetc. Well, my feeling that life IS rather than MEANS is the product of some rough-and-ready reasoning, sure, but also a deep, intuitive feeling, a kind of identitification - it feels right, as well as thinks right, to me. I find it liberating.

BECAUSE (wake up at the back, please) it's important to note that although life itself doesn't have a meaning, that does not mean our lives are not devoid of meaning. We have to make meanings to live. The human animal has to throw nets of meaning over the universe in order to live in it, has to make "sense" of its surroundings and itself - and many of those meanings are enlessly wonderful. I've got meanings all around me: Bach's Cello Suites, the Beatles, "Figaro" and Miles, I've got "Middlemarch" and Seamus Heaney, "The Wire" - just fill in your own current favourites of people creating meaning so they can make sense i.e. so that they can live as themselves, fulfill themselves. But even without these wonders, I've got the lives of those around me, those I'm close to and those I've just met, all those narratives and encounters: why should I feel desolate because life itself (human or nettle) has no meaning? I feel liberated, not abandoned. Meanings in my life abound, but that doesn't mean that life itself has a meaning. What is the meaning of the universe? Why is a galaxy? Non-question.

Why does this matter? This will be the subject of my next post (probably) which will be about our fear of death.

Look, I know this stuff isn't a barrel of laughs, but you've got this far, so why not hang in, eh? Please?