In search for meaning: why and what is that?
We all need to look for something to give us a direction to move on and a purpose for us to move. Yet, we can only be free to move within a limited range, encapsulated in a framework. We might explore, when brave enough, the unexplored, at the hedge of a given framework, but we must be careful enough not to loose ourselves in the void.
Even when we apparently do not explore anything new, we cannot stop projecting ourselves in the future, designing in our mind a path towards a specific goal to reach. Even that, is after all, equivalent to exploring unexplored territories, being our physical and oneiric experiences, all in all, emotionally equivalent.
When hopeful, we often visualize an expected outcome which would eventually give us some satisfaction and justify our daily efforts to reach such goal. Our energies spent on moving on, along the path we imagine to be conducive to the realization of our goals, trace a path which helps us fulfilling our lives and sustains our existence as transient beings in a limited world, placed in a universe with a doomed future.
When in despair, we often fearfully anticipate a tragic outcome, associated with our actions, or our existence in general. If we push ourselves deeper into unknown territories, after freeing ourselves from the framework we were born within, we will find ourselves exposed to dangers of which we know nothing. Ironically, the framework which incapsulates us, provides us with enough protection to be hopeful, and keep moving forward (or around): a direction is meaningful in itself and not for its end point.
We need a direction not to loose ourselves. Yet, to have a direction we need a framework which defines space and time. We also need a safeguard, provided by knowledge (cultural or technical), which allows us to believe we can safely move on. Ironically, all possible framework developed so far, are the result of random events, elaborated across time, generation after generation. We hinge on them, as we would hinge on a know path, no matter how dangerous it might be.
My tragedy is that I have certainly lost my direction and that is since long. This happened little by little. I firstly lost the faith in the framework of values and knowledge I was born in. Freeing myself from such framework was associated to my development as a critical thinker. Yet, I had soon to realize that dismantling a belief is much easier than constituting one. Ironically, soon after freeing ourselves, we end up being caught up into a new framework, a new set of beliefs. Eventually it appears we fear the “void” which is around and in within us. This void is emotionally represented by the lack of meaning associated with our lives.
Unfortunately, at this stage, I do not believe into anything strong enough to give me a direction and justify my efforts to keep going. I do not have anywhere to go, because I have no direction: hence, I have no meaning. The irony of this situation, which manifests my fear for the “void” is the fact that I am so desperate and fearful about the lack of meaning associated to my existence, that more and more often I look for coincidences, in order to reassure myself of the fact that I am on the right way, whichever that is. My explorations at the hedge of my known framework, and perhaps beyond, turned myself into a blind man, touching the objects around, before each step forward, to find the way to go somewhere he cannot see.
We often represent a difficult situation in the form of a tunnel, where we progress, step by step, towards light. I tend to represent my life as the opposite. The limited framework I was born in, was the light. It was a set of values (cultural and emotional) that defined my existence and placed it into a community of reference. My arrogance pushed me to the hedged of the framework: I probably abandoned all what was organized around me to protect myself and give myself a meaning in an enclosed community of human beings. Since that moment I am lost. There is only darkness at the end of the tunnel. The light is back at the start of my journey. Yet, going back to that start will not give me back any meaning. Light might be so strong to blind us. We are born encircled with light, blind. We grew up into scepticism and relativism. In doing so the reality around us becomes darker and darker. We emptied ourselves of any hope to get somewhere. We cannot go back to our starting point, but we know that going forward leads to nothing else than darkness and void.
It has been eleven years, so far, that I am going deeper into darkness and void. There is not much left of the protective framework I was born in. I am so lost that it does not matter anymore which direction I take, because everywhere is darkness and void.
Today is one of these days, where the lack of meaning sucks my energies away and leaves me stranded. In these days I seriously struggle to get something done, because I do not see the purpose of it.
Nevertheless, I got the idea of browsing on the internet and look for a picture of the place where George Orwell retired to. This is because I often develop a strong curiosity about the life of people, whom I believe very close to my intimate beliefs. I justify this curiosity by telling myself that this is a good way to understand how they developed their thoughts and from where, which might help me to find a way forward. In fact, this search for the origin and the building up of their ideas and thoughts would, in my view, help me understanding myself, as well as them. I sincerely believe that the environment shapes the people and people’s life are true masterpieces, which I want to assimilate as much as possible, being myself, as far as I know, an empty shell, carried away by ocean currents of which I know nothing.
Quickly, I discovered that George Orwell retired to a white farmhouse on an Scottish island, in the Hebrides, named Jura.
I live in Geneva: I spend my spare time cycling and reading. Nearby Geneva, towards the west, behind a chain of mountains named Jura, in the Bourgogne-Franche-Compté region in Eastern France there is the French department of Jura (named after its mountains). I feel particularly attached to that area since my first visit. When there, I feel the strong impression of being home. I do not know the reasons for my attachment to that place, which should be to me as foreign as any other here around. I thought for a while about it; but I never found anything concrete to justify such feeling. There they produce fairly good cheeses, its nature is as wild as it can be in Western Europe, its hills are green waves in a mild ocean, designing a broad and peaceful landscape. Nevertheless, these remarkable qualities are not yet good enough reasons for a foreigner to feel at home, especially when you like warm places: Jura’s lower valleys are temperate in summer, but the high mountain valleys are always fresh and winters are bitterly cold, and for me, unbearable. After all, nested in the Jura mountains, in the same region but in the nearby department of Doubs, there is a town, named Mouthe, which is known as “Little Siberia” (La Petite Sibérie) to the locals, and snow is not an uncommon sight there in late March when the rest of France (bar the high mountains) is in full spring mode.
Nevertheless, while puzzled by the no-sense of my attachment to that place, it has been ten years that I go cycling there around, like following a call. In my rides I always look at the typical old Jura farms: I imagine myself therein, retired to a calm life, close to nature, possibly writing.
There is no sense in anything, so I always look for coincidences; and strikingly, if you look for coincidences, you find them
In this case, I think this morning I found a coincidence strong enough to give some meaning to my attachment to that region and my quest for a farm there to settle in and write. Obviously the Jura, where I want to retire, is not Orwell’s Scottish island, and the farm will not be the same. Yet, I do believe that words have the power to give meaning to anything they name: they actually shape reality, in the way we perceive it. That’s why Orwell’s farm on the Jura Island and my love for him might justify my search for a farm in the Jura region, to settle in and write, imitating whom I love, in order to look for the meaning I fail to find. In doing so, I would also feel more connected to him. Such a connection, made poetic by the nostalgic realization of the impossibility of an actual contact, would certainly be a source of inspiration, a reason to go beyond our daily constraints which shapes our ephemeral lives. Perhaps, this feeling of connection and the desire to imitate an inspiring hero, will eventually motivate myself to write, being writing, in my view, the building up of reality out of chaos and the delivery of that bit of reality to the future, for somebody else to continue the search.
Despite the fact that there is no meaning in all this, this coincidence (which, in essence, is just the fact that both Orwell and myself thought of retiring to a farm in a place named Jura) gives me the determination to set a point in space and time to start moving forward. It also provides me with a direction, which I can perceive only by looking back, at this starting point, being myself still blind as far as it concerns the future. Each word I manage to pull out of chaos will trace my way: a path that does not exist yet, only because it never had a reason to exist, until I made it worth of existence. This is because, even in the absence of any defined path, we can still create one, through words, to shape our existence and provide it with a purpose good enough to keep going. Every word of my writing will pull out from chaos a bit of what might be the meaning of my life and trace a possible way to the acceptance of its tragic fragility and limits.
In the meantime, silly enough, the bare existence of this thought, pushes me to write, kicking off with this blog.