I am indebted to Donovan Copley who inspired this conversation.
At the end of
a guest event I led
offering people the opportunity to experience
Werner's work,
a woman came up to me, introduced herself, and said "I'm a counselor
too.". To me, her saying "too" implied she had me pegged as a
counselor like her. I bit my lip, listening intently. My very first
priority was for her to experience being heard / gotten.
Clearing up the notion that
Werner's work
equates to counseling, could wait. "How great!" I said. And I meant it.
"Who (or what) do you counsel?" I asked. "I counsel people who can't
find meaning in their lives, I help them find meaning in their lives"
she told me,
sincerely.
Elsewhere in
this body of work,
"helping" is differentiated
from "assisting".
That said, you can't make up a formula out of this (and if you try to,
you'll ruin it). Try this on for size: life has no meaning. It's empty
and meaningless. And it's empty and meaningless that it's empty and
meaningless. Making it mean something (in particular, making it
mean something that it's empty and meaningless) just adds arrogance.
People who say they can't find meaning in their lives, may have
discovered
something truly profound, albeit unknowingly / unwittingly (let's not
say they've
discovered
something truly "meaningful"): that life has no meaning.
Look: why spoil a good thing by adding meaning when they've already
discovered
there's none? Adding mud doesn't clarify the pond.
One possible
discovery
from the inquiry "What's left when I give away whatever I've added, to
make meaning out of that which really has no meaning?" is:
authenticity. Life has no meaning, so when I give away whatever I've
added, to make meaning out of that which really has no meaning, what's
left is
who I really am
ie as my authentic Self,
the
meaningless me
(if you will). Another possible
discovery
from the inquiry "What's left when I give away whatever I've added, to
make meaning out of that which really has no meaning?" is:
context,
just pure
context,
the space in which life and the events of my life
show up.
Make no error: confronting pure
context
can be daunting - at least at first. But if that is what's there, then
making meaning out of that which really has no meaning, may just be a
robotic defense mechanism against confronting the dauntingness of pure
context
ie against confronting
who we really
are.
Maybe.
And yet one more possible
discovery
from the inquiry "What's left when I give away whatever I've added, to
make meaning out of that which really has no meaning?" is:
compassion
-
compassion
for the very human state of affairs when life
(ie meaninglesslife) isn't experienced as
enough,
and thus we pile on made-up meaning in the
futile
hope that some day it will be enough
(life is enough
when we create it as enough without muddying it by adding meaning).
That explains why I don't
consider
myself a counselor (she got it). It also explains why I'm willing to
give away the meaning I've added, to make meaning out of that which
really has no meaning. Once you've done that, what's left to do is to
have a great life.
Share it
with people. Give it away. Give it all away.
