Significance and Relevance
As I grow older, I find myself with more and more questions and less and less answers. The thing is, these questions have become more important, significant, and relevant than ever. All my life, I’ve felt a sense of meaning and purpose weaving throughout each day and each connection. I think it is mostly because it is right there in my face all day, every day. My family, my wife, my kids, my job, the people I serve in my job (people with disabilities), the people I live with in my home in the neighborhoods where I have lived, mostly poor, mostly non-white, mostly very different from me; these have all been part of who I am and why I am hear. I can’t forget or turn away because when I open my eyes each day, there they are. When I look back I realize how much I loved that and how much I miss that. Now my kids are not around and I work from home so I see them and those I work with quite rarely. During COVID and because I’m working from home, those social connections, coworkers, clients have been limited.
In the stillness and aloneness, the questions get louder and the answers fade away. Who am I? Why am I here? These two main questions are becoming more and more focused because the reminders of the answers are not standing before me competing for attention. In this stillness, I present myself to life, to the universe, crying out, here I am! Hineni! Here am I!
Here am I, wondering what it is that I might be called to next.
But more importantly is Here and Now.
Here am I, wondering who am I, Here and Now,
in this time of life, transitioning to retirement and on to death
as I continue to wonder about my own significance and relevance.
Who am I now? Here and Now! Why am I here? Here and Now!?!
Waiting and wondering and wandering, watching as life comes my way.
Is life worth living?
We must not ask what someone told me or
what someone else's life is worth to them.
The question is not is your life worth living
and then listening to the pastor or philosopher or public servant
tell us about life and its worth.
Albert Camus calls this philosophical suicide,
where we hand over our meaning and purpose
to some higher authority or teacher
and let our answer be none
as we adopt the answers that we are told.
The question is not, "who do YOU say I am."
It is not, "what do you say my meaning and purpose are all about."
The only real question is:
Is MY life worth living???
If so, then that is what I shall do. If not, then what?
There is an incredible absurdity in the juxtaposition of
humankind’s cry for meaning and
the universe’s response of nothingness.
Even the gods stand before this cry for meaning
in silence and invisibility.
And yet here we stand,
looking to the skies or
looking into the abyss,
looking into the intimidating vastness of life
expectantly expecting an answer
to what we so deeply need
so that we can keep going.
What we do not realize is that the universe and the gods will not give answers to something so personal and important as my own significance and relevance. The answers are within each person. How dare any proclaimed external authority proclaim to know my meaning and purpose, my reason for being. How dare anyone tell me that someone over there can tell me who I am and why I am here.
Expecting to be told answers to such deeply important and personal questions is at least a cop out, but even more so, a diminishment of creation and its wisdom of which we are part. Everything that exists, except for human beings, already knows their significance and their relevance. Meaning and purpose are embedded into all of creation. These are things we already know, but have often forgotten. They have no question about what they must do Here and Now nor about what they must do tomorrow and into the future. Significance and Relevance are built into the stuff of the universe. It is the stuff of the gods. It is the stuff of all that is greater than me. Leaving us puny humans with identity and purpose in the Here and Now if we were to pay attention. What is that which we seek? It is what it is. It is what presents itself. It is right there in our faces just like it has been all of our lives; whether it be a child, an elder, a beggar, a neighbor, a stranger, or one of the least of these. They are there each and every day before us, showing us, teaching us who we are and why we are here.
For too long, I have been overthinking it.
We are exactly where we are meant to be.
Things come to us exactly when they are meant to be there.
And we choose to see, hear, and learn… or not.
I have no great and cosmic purpose. I’m just me.
I have no great and cosmic identity. I’m still just me.
I have no great and cosmic reason to be.
It is what it is. It is that which is before me each and every day.
And hence, my response to the silence of the universe is: Hineni! Here am I!
And my response to all that which is greater than me is: Hineni! Here am I!
Not so much, here am I, send me.
But rather here am I, waiting, watching,
anticipating, knowing life is what it is.
Life is that which comes, that which shows up.
And here am I! Hineni!
I am beginning to understand that significance and relevance is just part of life as it is. And life is that which comes, that which shows up; Here and Now. I don’t have to make myself significant or relevant because it is embedded in my very being. Just like a tree or a bee, or the air that we breathe, it is part of what “I am”, part of “I am what I am”. I think that when I start losing my sense of meaning and purpose, significance and relevance, it is because I am overlooking it, searching past what is obvious. I’m working too hard at it. It has been there all the time. All I need to do is remember who I am and remember what I already know.
Hineni! Here am I! Fully present, fully alive, Here and Now.
Such smallness. Such greatness. Such humility. Such dignity.
Leaving me knowing that I am who I am;
Nothing more, nothing less
than anything else
in my world and this universe.
“The meaning of life is to be alive.
It is so plain and so obvious and so simple.
And yet everybody rushes around in a great panic as if
it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.”
(Alan Watts)
* Hineni is a Hebrew word that has two parts. Hineh means here and Ani means I. The modern Hebrew word for here is Po, which means “here” in the sense of attendance or role call. But Hineni is “here” in the sense of a deep and waiting presence. Sometimes it is translated as “Behold!” Hineni is used in the Torah as a deeply rooted and authentic response to God in a way that is almost a form of worship in the sense of being ready, willing, waiting, and listening. Hineni has also been used by God in response to a person’s outcry. For me, it is a very profound response to life and to the universe as a nontheist, a human response to that which is greater than me.
