CHAPTER 31

Embracing Tremors

It’s easy to throw up your hands and cry, “I don’t get this idea of meaning-making. How can you make meaning? Either there is meaning or there isn’t. You can’t just make meaning like you can make a convertible or a violin. No, I don’t get it—so I think I’ll pass!” This objection is at once reasonable and fully disingenuous. It is disingenuous because each of us knows in our bones exactly what the phrase “making meaning” signifies. We know perfectly well that it is composed of ideas such as personal responsibility, courage, engagement, and authenticity. There isn’t a thing unclear about it.

However, part of the objection is reasonable—the part where we cry out in pain. What we are objecting to is not the obscurity of the phrase but the nature of the universe the phrase posits. We object to a universe where meaning has to be made. We object to a universe that is meaningless until we force it to mean. We object to nature pulling this dirty trick and making us a partner to it, giving us exactly two choices, to not look this reality square in the eye and live as a coward, or to see what is required and live as an absurd hero. It is not the obscurity of the phrase “making meaning” that disturbs us but what it says about life.

How do we meet the objection that we would like life to be something other than what it is? We meet it with maturity and equanimity. We gracefully accept that meaning must be made, that meaning can be lost in the blink of an eye, that meanings change, and so on. We just stand up—which is exactly what we know we want to do.

Naturally this standing up, though an act of bravery, produces new anxieties. It is like a person in an occupied country bravely deciding to become a partisan—and then realizing what that entails. Isn’t one of our genetic goals to reduce our experience of anxiety? Yes, but that isn’t a goal of our humanity. Our genes tell us to avoid dark tunnels; our humanity tells us to explore them if that’s where we’ll find our writing. Your choice to avoid anxiety at all costs or to embrace the anxiety that comes with living authentically determines how you will live your life. If you decide that reducing your experience of anxiety is your paramount goal, you will never be a partisan.

We lose our taste for roller coasters when we get older. At fourteen, we can’t wait to get on the Wild Monkey or the Ulti- mate Plunge. At forty, we can wait. Likewise, our taste for anxiety does not increase. We mind our grandchildren with an even more watchful eye than we minded our children, we move our money to safer investments, and we take fewer risks and invite fewer heart palpitations. This is the natural way. Still, in order to live authentically, we must risk anxiety, brave anxiety, embrace anxiety, and invite anxiety every single day. For a meaning-maker, there is no retirement from anxiety.

So make this choice—even though choosing itself provokes anxiety. Meaning-making requires that you make one mindful choice after another. There is no intellectual freedom, no personal freedom, no human freedom without a commitment to lifelong choosing. When a value that means something to you is involved, you must make a choice or fail yourself by not choosing. When work that means something to you is at stake, you must choose to do it or fail yourself by not choosing to do it. You must choose to choose: a day without mindful choosing is a day without meaning.

You must choose even though choosing settles nothing. Our meanings are bound to change as we decide to invest meaning here, remove meaning there, and monitor our meaning investments. New choices—including contradicting yourself from one day to the next—will prove necessary. How unsettling to be for a war on Monday and against it on Tuesday, as our understanding of the situation changes; these are among our worst feelings, having our world turned upside down overnight. Still, we must bravely change our minds and our meanings and make the choices that fit today, not yesterday.

You can manage to live a settled life, existentially speaking, and reduce the number of choices you need to make by adopting overarching positions such as “my country is always right” or “I only write for money.” But you can only accomplish this anxiety reduction at the cost of your integrity. It is much better, although more nerve-wracking, to accept that meaning will never be settled, that meaning is always at risk, and that meaning is a challenge and not a foregone conclusion. Agreeing to this is like agreeing to live on an active fault line. There is no reason why you should agree with a smile and no reason why you should feel sanguine about surviving. But what you lose in safety you gain in authenticity.

LESSON 31

Existential space is shifting space. Make appropriate meaning today; tomorrow make the meaning appropriate for tomorrow.

To Do

1. Have a rousing debate with yourself about whether meaning ought to stay put or whether it is appropriate for it to (uncomfortably and even unaccountably) shift. Describe a time when meaning shifted in your life. What caused the shift? How did it feel to have it shift? What were the consequences of that meaning sea change?

2. Look into the future. Can you see an important meaning that is likely to shift one day—maybe your work identity when you retire or your conception of yourself as a daily nurturer when your children leave the nest? How might you prepare yourself for such meaning shifts? Can they be prepared for beforehand?

3. Shift a meaning. See how sickening that feels. Then recover quickly.

4. Explain to yourself why you’d choose to live in a place where earthquakes, hurricanes, blizzards, or tornadoes are guaranteed.