Answer to "What is the meaning of life?"

Today I exercised and began work on my ethics presentation for the School on Alcoholism. Then I saw some of the tree monkeys in the backyard trees climb onto the back of our huge crows and fly out over the valley, they knitted long rope ladders and climbed down to the valley floor. That left the crows quite confused. (Just kidding—needed some excitement.)

Let me think about the ideas I came across today. Surely every one of us comes across ideas each day even if we are too dull to notice them. Well, I didn’t notice any ideas today.

Well then, did I come across any beauty today. Actually I did. At lunch I saw the beautiful bright spring light shinning down in our back yard and pointed it out to Lorri and Michelle. I suggested that we were eating good food at our new table in new chairs looking out over a beautiful scene. They agreed then went back to watching the news on TV. Depressing. Still, there was a moment of noticed beauty. It was a good moment.

My problem for the day is creating a new presentation for the school. Solving a problem of any kind—engaging one’s mind in a task for which we are designed-- is like a hand fitting into a glove and smoothing out the wrinkles. Our minds are made to do things—to think through issues or to understand and appreciate things. So if, for example, a person stairs at the workings of a giant clock to understand how the mechanism works the mind becomes engaged and in so doing fulfills its potential. It is like a dog or a cat watching a laser light move about on the floor. There is something built into the mind of a small predator animal that is captivated by the dot of light moving on the ground. Over the years my dog has learned that the light only appears when I am holding a certain object in my hand. When the light disappears she comes back to me and looks at the device, her eyes begging me to show her the light again. If I point it at one place on the ground she tries to bite it but her muzzle blocks the light and she backs away. Then she sees it again and goes after it. After a while she just stairs at it until it moves, then she goes in for the kill. When I shin it on the wall she repeatedly tries to bite it, slamming her face into the wall. It must hurt. But something compels her to keep doing it. Somehow there is something in her brain’s wiring triggered by the laser light creating a deep impulse. She can’t stop herself from chasing the light.

People’s brains are more complex, but can be engaged in ways not all that dissimulator from my dog’s brain. The closest analogy is a video game. That kind of engagement is not productive but millions, perhaps billions, of people will spend hours with their brains engaged in the quest to win the game.

But it is not only video games. All of us seek to have our brains engaged in some way. It feels good. People work at jobs, develop careers, and create projects at home and at work, because the human brain is made to be engaged in solving problems and appreciating things. Of course the work we do can be productive, and on it rests the progress of civilization. But engaging the brain can also serve to pass time or as a tool to help manage pain. That is why I say that unrelenting focus on a task, total absorption in the doing of something or in the attempt to understand something is itself the fulfillment of the human potential the actualization of the human design. Completion of the project is merely the end of the absorption. It is in the focus itself that we find the meaning of life.