Life's Meaning and Selfish Pursuits
Speaking with my mother on the phone a few weeks ago, she lamented the aches and pains that she and her older friends have been experiencing lately, concluding that today’s elderly are dealing with issues that their parents never encountered because they’re “living too darn long.” While my mother is certainly still active and enjoying various activities, she feels like she’s no longer living a “purpose-driven life,” borrowing a phrase from Rick Warren’s best-selling book. Aside from doing some tutoring and volunteering at a hospital, she doesn’t feel like she’s truly contributing to society or the greater good.
I don’t know that one has to actively contribute to society to live a meaningful life, but I’ve been ruminating about this ever since our conversation. I too am wrestling with what a meaningful existence entails. Back in 2017, I wrote a few blogs that tackled this subject, and I seemed more assured of the answer than ever before. I wrote:
Learn. Explore. Volunteer. Start a hobby. Help others. Learn an instrument. Love, and experience joy with the ones you love. Learn a craft. Grow something. Learn a language. Have fun with friends. And perhaps most importantly, enjoy the little miracles around you every day.
But for me, 2022 has been a year of saying “no” to things. I resigned from my two biggest volunteering activities: picking up food for a local food pantry and serving on my synagogue’s board. At the end of the summer I am leaving one of my bands, and I’ve also given up baseball this year, having watched not one game this season in person or on TV, an act of defiance which provoked the following response from an old friend of mine: “Oh shit, this is getting real.” It is kind of! I’m used to watching over a hundred games a year. This year I’ve probably freed up somewhere around 300 hours to pursue other things.
But what things, exactly? As a friend of mine once said of retirement: you can’t just retire from something, you have to retire to something. And if 2022 is the year for me to say no to some things, I’m also going to have to say yes to other things.
So far, it’s a little unresolved, and I echo my mother’s thoughts that perhaps I’m not living a purpose-driven life. But the thing is, I’m happy to have walked away from a few of my volunteer activities. It was time. I’m at peace with leaving one of my bands. It was time. I don’t miss baseball in the least, something I couldn’t fathom saying a few years ago. But what will I walk towards?
I have friends whose purpose in life seems to be to enjoy life itself. Is that enough? It’s a self-centered pursuit for sure, but damn, they seem pretty happy, and after spending years and years doing what I thought I should do, I’m kind of enjoying just doing what I want to. I’m recording a new album that few people will ever hear. I’m playing in a few bands. I’m reading books more proactively. I’m tackling home maintenance projects. I’m reaching out to friends and family, attending concerts, enjoying food and taking walks with my wife and dog.
Is that enough? It isn’t noble. It’s perhaps not the life I can sustain for long before I tell myself to get back in the game and – as Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. described in his novel Dead-Eye Dick – stop living life as epilogue and get back to adding to one’s story. It’s tricky. My mom probably feels like her life is epilogue – that her life story is over now. I’m 29 years younger than my mom, and in some ways I’m living a life that’s “short on story and overburdened with epilogue.” But I’m enjoying it except for the part of me that feels guilty for enjoying it!
For now, I’m going to try to give myself permission to pat myself on my back for twenty years of parenting and volunteering and say it’s okay to have a reprieve. To reset. To just breathe for a while and let my whims take me where they may. Eventually I’ll find something to say yes to, that excites me.
This meaning of life stuff is tricky, whether you’re 83 or 54. It really never gets any easier.