The Meaning of Life

Dear Collaborators,

Today was our second day working together in a new school.  One family and I decided that we had to leave La Ecovilla School at the end of last week.  I will not say much about this beyond quoting Amos 3:3 with minimal explanation:

"Can two walk together, except they be agreed?"

I explained to the children at La Ecovilla that we adults are still working on figuring out how to live better the principles of the book "The 7 Habits of Happy Kids," and we don't always have all of the lessons mastered yet either.  In chapter 4, Lily learned how to practice the art of "win-wins" and in chapter 6 the whole neighborhood learned to synergize and play as a team.  We couldn't quiet get there with our original group at La Ecovilla.  The fault lines ran too deep.

As one parent said in a final meeting that I attended, there were already two groups, or two camps, before I even got there.  The seeds of the end are often sown in the ground from the beginning, and sometimes there is no avoiding certain final outcomes.  I am extremely happy with my departure from La Ecovilla.  I am happy to have had the experience as the students and I grew together though whole hearted lessons, but I am so happy the experience is over as the school could not create the structure with me that I needed to continue those lessons successfully long term.  I and the family that left both wish the school well on their path, and we hope they find success on that path in their own way.  For those of us who departed however, we are seeking a different kind of success.

And this is okay too.  It is not a failure to separate sometimes.  In fact, this was the first lesson in "The 7 Habits of Happy Kids."  We must all learn to be proactive about our own success and happiness.  When Sammy the Squire found that he couldn't share the vision of any of this neighborhood friends, he discovered that his path to success was in going his own way and in doing his own thing.  Not everyone has to do the same thing.  We don't always have to work together as a own team.  The joyful ending however, is that both groups that came out of the separation have their own likeminded companions.  No one has had to take their path alone.  May each of our two separate groups enjoy more unity now that we have gone our separate ways:

Psalm 133:1 "Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!"

And this now brings me to the point of this essay.  The meaning and purpose of life for human beings is for us to find ways to be connected to one another in love and harmony.  At the core of our existence, there is no other meaning to life.  I quote the Bible frequently, but it doesn't not matter to me whether or not a person believes in God or not.  Shocking as it may seem, it doesn't even matter to me whether I believe in God or not.  I feel deeply connected to the mysteries of life and to the original or fountain or creator of life and that is enough for me.  There was a wonderful New York Times article about this post-theistic, post-atheist, post-agnostic point of view this past week:

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/30/is-belief-a-jewish-notion/?_php=true&_type=blogs&hp&rref=opinion&_r=0

The point is that practice is more important than presumption to put it plainly.  When all the trappings of our traditions and our trinkets are taken away from us, all that really matters is our ability to connect with other human beings looking into each other's eyes, hearing each other's voices, or reaching out and touching one another.  It is sad however that we can only discover how clearly life is nothing more than this when we have nothing left but this (Matthew 19:24).  People were perhaps never stripped down en masse to bare bones existence more drastically than in the concentration camps of World War II.  And yet, in this utter poverty, one noble idealist discovered and described most brilliantly what in fact true wealth is.  In this context, Viktor Frankl wrote Man's Search for Meaning describing the principles of his Logotherapy, in which he detailed what it took for some people to survive even the worst conditions in life and never let go of the strength to live.  It is worth making a lengthy quote here to illuminate this reality:

QUOTE (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man's_Search_for_Meaning):

Frankl concludes that the meaning of life is found in every moment of living; life never ceases to have meaning, even in suffering and death. In a group therapy session during a mass fast inflicted on the camp's inmates trying to protect an anonymous fellow inmate from fatal retribution by authorities, Frankl offered the thought that for everyone in a dire condition there is someone looking down, a friend, family member, or even God, who would expect not to be disappointed. Frankl concludes from his experience that a prisoner's psychological reactions are not solely the result of the conditions of his life, but also from the freedom of choice he always has even in severe suffering. The inner hold a prisoner has on his spiritual self relies on having a hope in the future, and that once a prisoner loses that hope, he is doomed.

An example of Frankl's idea of finding meaning in the midst of extreme suffering is found in his account of an experience he had while working in the harsh conditions of the Auschwitz concentration camp:

... We stumbled on in the darkness, over big stones and through large puddles, along the one road leading from the camp. The accompanying guards kept shouting at us and driving us with the butts of their rifles. Anyone with very sore feet supported himself on his neighbor's arm. Hardly a word was spoken; the icy wind did not encourage talk. Hiding his mouth behind his upturned collar, the man marching next to me whispered suddenly: "If our wives could see us now! I do hope they are better off in their camps and don't know what is happening to us."

That brought thoughts of my own wife to mind. And as we stumbled on for miles, slipping on icy spots, supporting each other time and again, dragging one another up and onward, nothing was said, but we both knew: each of us was thinking of his wife. Occasionally I looked at the sky, where the stars were fading and the pink light of the morning was beginning to spread behind a dark bank of clouds. But my mind clung to my wife's image, imagining it with an uncanny acuteness. I heard her answering me, saw her smile, her frank and encouraging look. Real or not, her look was then more luminous than the sun which was beginning to rise.

A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth – that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way – an honorable way – in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment.

END QUOTE.

In a more upbeat sense, one can also see the meaning of life described very logically and scientifically in brief in Jeremy Rifkin's "The Empathic Civilization" from RSA animate (http://youtu.be/l7AWnfFRc7g) or at greater length in Tom Shadyac's documentary "I AM" (http://youtu.be/w8KyNdE1fBY and http://www.iamthedoc.com/).

Where ever one gets this knowledge of the meaning of life, whether from the stories of the Bible, or from the Buddha, or from Neural Science, or from a philosopher and psychologist in a concentration camp - where ever it comes from, once one really has this knowledge, it is a priceless treasure to which nothing else compares.  It is the central operating manual of human existence.  For me as a teacher, what also could ever make my work easier?

Today I had a new first grader to work with in my new class.  He was distracted, what we might call hyper active, and clearing behind all of the other students in skills.  I needed his cooperation fast to get him caught up to speed.  Knowing what I know about the meaning of life, I took this little boy outside at a certain point when virtues project language and the 7 Habits of Happy Kids wasn't breaking through to him.  I said down alone with him behind the classroom and I asked this boy to imagine himself all alone in the world.  What if he was the only human being at home, at school, and everywhere.  How would you feel I asked him?  He looked right at me and answered without hesitation that he would feel lonely.  Exactly right, I responded.  And then we talked about how the purpose of human life is all about being together.  After that we were about to talk about what would help us be together in more harmony.  When we got back to class, my partner teacher looked clearly pleased observing this young boy working quietly and productively all the rest of the day.  He did all his work on his letters perfectly in a calm and orderly fashion with the other students, and then when I asked him to draw a picture of working in calm harmony with the other students he only had to hear my request once and with zero supervision he drew a beautiful and careful picture of how he was working with all of the other students in first grade.

This is the magic I have always wanted.  This is why it doesn't matter to me who wrote the Bible or where exactly it came from or what is literally accurate in a small way or whether nothing at all is literally accurate.  What matters to me is that I can motivate myself and my students to work, to produce, and to happy in the process.  This for me is clear joy and an immensely meaningful life.

I am in no way perfect.  I can be both harsh and dramatic at times in the intensity of both my thoughts and my passions.  The waters run deep and the lights burn brightly within me.  Every strength comes with a complementary weakness, and every virtue and degrade into vice if not moderated by other virtues.  However, like having a compass pointing North, even when the storm shakes my navigation sense, the needle pointing me to the path of meaning always rights itself within me, and I feel secure and happy marching forward along my way.  The winds and the rains come and beat against this house, but I am not moved from the core of how I want to experience life and of how I want to travel (Matthew 7:24-27).

We can see clearly now; the rains are gone.  It looks like happy sailing ahead for me and both my known and new crew of kids.  Tomorrow are going to launch into learning reading fully equipped with everything on our checklist:

* www.virtuesproject.com to further develop our sense of how to work in happy harmony
* The Enneagram for building characters into stories out of Hebrew alphabet archetypes
* Principles of Neural Science by Eric R Kandel for the power behind knowledge networks
* Tony Buzan making Mind Maps of simple association webs practical
* Treasure hunting in history with all our colors for the digits, letters, and archetypes

That reminds me, I better go see if I can buy some more crayons now... Until the next post,


Yours truly,

Sky