“LIFE HAS NO MEANING. EACH OF US HAS MEANING AND WE BRING IT TO LIFE. IT IS A WASTE TO BE ASKING THE QUESTION WHEN YOU ARE THE ANSWER” – Joseph Campbell
“I DON’T BELIEVE PEOPLE ARE LOOKING FOR THE MEANING OF LIFE AS MUCH AS THEY ARE LOOKING FOR THE EXPERIENCE OF BEING ALIVE” – Joseph Campbell
“PARTICIPATE JOYFULLY IN THE SORROWS OF THE WORLD. WE CANNOT CURE THE WORLD OF SORROWS, BUT WE CAN CHOOSE TO LIVE IN JOY” – Joseph Campbell
I have waited to the end of the week to get busy on this and I was really not sure what to put down. I was drawing a blank and having trouble getting motivated when I saw this quote while reading Friday afternoon and decided to look it up. It seemed familiar and sure enough it was by a favorite author of mine – Joseph Campbell. In the process of rereading some of his quotes I found a few more that I like. I guess I can start here to see where this might go? I am familiar with JC’s books called “The Hero with a Thousand Faces” and the “Hero’s Journey.” Excellent reading by the way if you want to explore some deep thought provoking concepts. So when I saw the first quote about life not having any meaning my curiosity was stirred. What was Joseph Campbell talking about? What did he mean “Life has no meaning.” That is a good question. I guess it means that life just is. But as humans we want to add control and meaning by a higher power. We want to think that there is some grand plan to it all. To explain the bad things. The fantastic and fortuitous things. The terrible things. But in reality there is no control, there is no meaning outside of us. We bring the meaning to life. As individuals and in mass, we create it. We give it meaning, we create the control. Because outside of that there is nothing.
Thinking about this strikes a chord with me. I am sure that there are people in the world that have their lives turn out just like they had planned. But I am not one of those. If I could go back in time and know what I know now. Wow, there would be so many things that I would change or do differently. But that is not how it works. When I was a lot younger I thought that there was a grand plan for me and I just needed to discover it, work harder, do better? But what I have come to realize is that there is no grand plan. It was just made up as I went along and continues to be. Choose this path and not that one, turn right and not left, work at this job, not that one, etc.… I so wanted to believe that there was some higher authority that in all the cosmos, had my best interest in mind. That what happened to me or did not happen to me was all part of a game plan. Wow, writing this down I cannot believe how naïve I was. To think this. Could it have been a fear of taking control and responsibility for my own life? Could it all relate back to fear, fear of failure, fear of death, fear of making the wrong decisions in life? Just fear? Maybe none of this matters? Is it all random out there in the cosmos? This thing that we call “life” has no meaning – we bring the meaning, we bring the control, we bring the experience.
The pictures this week are from Lory State Park and Horsetooth Mountain Park. The rain had let up a little bit and it was a great day to get out on the trails. The top two pictures show the wide valley area between Lory and Horsetooth. As you can tell the sun was out at this time and everything was verdant green. Just beautiful. The top picture was looking south towards Horsetooth and the middle picture was looking north towards Lory. The bottom picture is from the top of Towers Road in Horsetooth. I think I have posted a similar picture before. But I am always awed when I get to the top to look west and see Meeker and Longs Peak. As you can tell there is still a lot of snow for the first week of June. Well I think that is going to be it for me this week. Take care and hope to see you out on the trails.