The Garden of Lost Things

It’s all too often these days that we are confronted with the search for life’s great purpose. We flip every rock and scour every corner in hopes of a clue, a single crumb to satiate our endless hunger. We grow exhausted as we continue to come up with empty hands. Those empty hands then grasp for something, even if all they can reach is resentment.

We look to others to give us the answer, to validate our hopes as meaningful, our dreams as serving this grand purpose. If our hopes and dreams fit, then we fit. This makes us feel safe. But what happens when one person’s great purpose ignores (or even completely contradicts) another’s? Where is the Truth in meaning? What is our real purpose? Does it even matter?

I choose to believe in the purpose of purposelessness. Alan Watts claimed that “we are the universe experiencing itself”. If this is true, and I choose to believe it is, then we are doing enough simply by having an experience. Our own independent, unique, experience. Each of us is a window through which the universe gets to live its own majesty and endless beauty. A lens through which it gets to explore and understand its own complexity.

“We are the universe experiencing itself.”

-Alan Watts

Your existence fundamentally assures its own value. There is no further prerequisite to having a meaningful life than to live it. To simply be is to be enough. The universe has given you permission to hold value in every experience, big and small, happy and sad. You do not need to climb mountains, cross oceans, or touch the stars to have done enough. Your experience is invaluable. To share it with the world, with the universe, even more so.

So maybe there is no meaning of life. Or maybe it’s just that simple. Either way, you are given permission to find joy in authentic places. You are free.