Note to Readers: I actually drafted a good portion of this  piece a number of months ago but didn’t get around to publishing it. To be honest, I sort of forgot about it until I’d already completed my most recent series. I realized that, while there is certainly overlap, there are some differences. I’ve tried to clean away some of that overlap and here is what remains.

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How many of us wake up each morning, look around at our lives and surroundings, our circumstances and ask, “What’s the point?”

Probably some of us do. Maybe the question is so powerful that we can’t help but sigh, feeling the burden of facing the same challenges each day, with no real end in sight.

For others of us, perhaps that question quietly percolates in the background, not particularly obvious but not fully absent either.

In fact, we all need a reason to keep on going, to take action in order to proceed through life. Show me a person who has no such reason, and I’ll show you a person who is already dying.

Does the following internal monologue sound even vaguely familiar?

Yes, I’ve sought this or that, with some successes, plenty of failures, periods of happiness, even joy, and periods of sadness, even grief. I’ve been in and out of relationships, some short and some long, even quite long. I’ve felt the rush at finding someone I truly like who seems to like me. I’ve also felt the heartache of rejection. I can quickly recall that phone call offering me a long sought-after job, with perhaps a celebration dinner that evening with family or friends. I’ve also felt the creeping dissatisfaction with a job, the encroaching burden that not-so-subtly whispers that maybe I’m actually not in the right place after all. I’ve moved from point to point, learning the fact that little if anything lasts forever and even if it seems to, it’s really not the same as I first thought.

We each began our lives with an idea, two people making a decision, the result of which (planned or not) was us. Cells divided strictly according to a pre-ordained code. Months afterwards, we arrive as fully formed human beings. Later, our bodies give out, the system submitting to frailty, and our lives end. The countless points in the middle reflect the common journey mentioned above.

Is there no reason for any of this, other than the onward march of physical, chemical and biological forces? Is there a point, after all is said and done? Do I have a purpose, once born, other than to eat, stay alive and procreate before I die? If not, then what is my value, when you stop to think about it? Perhaps I’m just an infinitesimally small cog in a vast cosmic machine that cares nothing for me. A kind of cork bobbling in the middle of a vast ocean, easily missed, and of no real consequence?

Maybe I’m stepping out on a limb, but, I’ll suggest all of us crave a purpose, whether we choose to think about it or not. We want our lives to have some value, whatever it may be. In fact, each of us wants to mean something when all it is said and done. Purpose. Value. Meaning.

Is this just wishful thinking or is there something to this? If there isn’t anything there, then what’s the point to getting out of bed? What’s the point to us looking forward to anything? Why should we care what others think? Why do we want to belong to something, do anything? Just as we hunger for food to sustain us, we also hunger for significance, a different type of sustenance but just as important.

When things don’t go well or worse, don’t we naturally ask “Why? Why me? This isn’t the way it’s supposed to be.” I suggest that this plea, however soft or loud, is just a way for us to give voice to the belief that we’re meant for something else. That this bad or unfortunate thing is a rejection of what we value and, therefore, a rejection of us.

When things go well, we can tend to doubt, wondering how long the good times will last. When will the next shoe fall? Perhaps the natural optimist doesn’t think this way but, assuredly, the natural pessimist or the one who endured trial after trial is likely to have such thoughts. Regardless, unless we are Pollyana, we know that some kind of suffering isn’t all that too far off.

Most of us travel through life, flitting from one thing to the next, hoping for fulfillment, which is another way of saying we seek answers to questions we may not know we even have. The hope is a constant feature and a sign pointing to a place where we have purpose, are valued, and where life is meaningful.

I should know. For some reason (time and place, family histories and dispositions), I felt this kind of tug beginning in early adolescence, growing up in the turbulent 1960s where it was expected I could not be a bystander to the great causes facing us. Many voices combined in telling me that my life should mean something. I needed to dig in. Become involved. Try to leave the world a better place for my connection to it.

In the decades that followed, college, profession, marriage, and family all formed a life of its own, with me at center stage. Relationships, things, and events were all punctuated by joys and sorrows, victories and defeats, none of them unfolding exactly according to my desires.

For all sorts of reasons, I woke up one night, a number of years ago, with the realization I was hopelessly lost (which would have seemed absurd to all who knew me, be they wife and family, friends or colleagues). I was commonly recognized as accomplished and successful. I had a beautiful and loving family, had overcome life-threatening illnesses, was at the pinnacle of my profession, receiving consistent accolades, and was fit and active.

But it all tumbled like a house of cards facing just the slightest breath of wind.

The desperation I felt then would have more commonly been typical of the long-suffering addict on the street or the victim of abuse and violence, unable to escape the endless cycle. How is that possible?

The answer is, it’s possible because we are all after the same thing. But it turned out I was actually chasing the wrong things, just as many of us are. There is a difference.

My belief is that we’re all wired to seek the same thing but we don’t know how to find it so we end up going down pathways that nearly always disappoint.

In retrospect, I probably should have known better because I’d thought about these things for a very long time. Which is an irony. It shows we’re all made of the same stuff and vulnerable to the same misdirection.

Now some might interject here that I’m being too harsh. Too general. Painting everyone with the same broad brushstrokes. And I can understand that criticism. Someone could say to me, “my life is actually pretty good. It turned out fairly close to how I wanted it. In balance, I’m quite content and I haven’t been seeking answers to the kinds of questions you’re talking about.”

A recent American Psychiatric Association study found that nearly two thirds of Americans are “extremely or somewhat anxious about health and safety for themselves and their families and more than a third are more anxious overall than last year.” In a separate study, interestingly, there was a direct correlation between higher income level and levels of anxiety. This included cultures around the world. In other words, the prosperity achieved in wealthier communities and population resulted in heightened anxiety. In still another study by the APA of 20,000 random people, it was discovered that nearly 50% suffer from loneliness, which is on the increase in our society.

These are examples of large groups of people who feel disconnected and ill at ease. I can’t count the studies and journal articles I’ve read in recent years that describe the rise in alienation while the world has never been more prosperous.

Of course, there are significant groups of people that face daily trials, including finding food and clean drinking water and safe havens from violence and persecution. Maybe an explanation can be that those with high expectations for material gain are the most susceptible to dashed hopes. Attaining material advantage is actually a source for anxiety and loneliness. Or, in the terms I’m using, these advantages do not answer our inner drive for a sense of purpose, clarity of what is truly valuable, and what is the meaning of our lives. We smirk a bit at the popular adage that “he who dies with the most toys win.” I might flip that a bit and say, “he who seeks the most toys, hoping for fulfillment, actually loses in the end.”

So, on the one hand, we frequently have hope but that hope can morph into the realization that it never lasts. All good things come to an end. On the other hand, we can try to come to grips with the essence of what this failure is actually telling us.

With that in mind, let’s now turn to the common Christian belief that we are all broken. No one escapes. Observed outside of the Christian context, this might seem peculiar. Brokenness sounds pretty extreme. Anxious perhaps. Lonely maybe. But broken?

When something is broken it means it isn’t working as it was designed. We can’t be broken, even a little, if we weren’t designed for much. Each of us wants to be in touch with that design which is where we can discover our purpose, our value and the meaning of our lives.

Now, some people have no problem knowing they’re broken. It’s the most obvious thing they live each day. One way to characterize brokenness is the place we are when we wonder how to put one foot in front of the next without crumbling. It’s the place we are when time moves forward with interminable slowness. The minutes and hours drag on, relentlessly. It takes seemingly Herculean effort to get out of bed. We pull back from relationships. We welcome sleep until the nightmares take over. Many different things can bring about this state of affairs. Anyone reading this will either have experienced it or knows someone who has. Or is.

On the other hand, plenty of people do not connect with something like being broken. Perhaps they’ve lived a fairly charmed life. Never known physical privation from poverty or illness or violence. Never known the kind of rejection that completely tears at the soul, slicing away all semblance of self-worth. “What, me broken? Set-backs, perhaps, battling here and there. But, broken? No.”

Regardless, most of us come to a place, sooner or later, when we realize that our own efforts cannot keep the beast at bay. We will realize we are weak and in that weakness we will ask the question, what’s the point? This is true, even for those who have lived a fairly charmed life and, nearing the end, look back without any regrets. I hazard the guess that all will find some reason or set of reasons why their life had purpose, value and meaning.

So far, I’m trying to build the case that, first, all of us search for purpose in our lives even if we don’t recognize that is what we are doing. All of us want to feel that we provide value of some kind and all of us want that purpose and that value to be meaningful. Second, material advantages actually increase alienation and a loss of purpose and ultimate fulfillment. And, third, huge numbers of people suffer from that loss of purpose, even to the point of being broken.

Ok. Where does this lead? If I buy into some piece of these ideas, how do I discover my purpose? How do I peel away the layers to better understand the fundamental value of my life? When all is said and done, what does my life really mean?

I always learn something when I explore these things a bit deeper.

When I’ve discussed this theme with people, I like to begin with an either/or question. Pick one answer out of two. On the one hand, are we just the result of random and coincidental forces that brought subatomic particles together to make us?

The question is really another way of coming to grips with our purpose. Which is another way of answering the question, what is my value? If I’m more than miniscule particles created when distant stars exploded billions of year ago, what am I? What am I worth? Do I have a purpose beyond eating, surviving and procreating? If not, what is life about? If so, how do I find it?

Oh, of course, there are all sorts of answers that immediately come to mind. My purpose is to have a family, to give love and life to others. My purpose is to be part of a broad movement of people joined together in a great cause to start this, fight that, believe in something important.

But, if we do have a purpose, where does that come from?

In some limited fashion, plants, animals, rocks and rivers each have a purpose. They do what they are designed to do. It does not matter, for this discussion, whether the purpose for each is the result of natural evolution, supernatural creation, or exploding stars.

Similarly, in loose fashion, they provide value. On earth, rocks create a platform for soil and the things that come from the soil. Rivers create broad platforms for abundant life. Plants also provide platforms for abundant life, including oxygen, consumed by animate lifeforms. Animals benefit from all these things although, while conscious, they don’t have a way of understanding what it all means.

Only humans, among all known things, are able to go from purpose to value to meaning. Only humans can ask the question, “Where does all of this come from?”

Only humans can ask “What does it mean to be human?” Only humans can figure out that knowing one’s purpose is a way of identifying what makes me, “me.”

Am I just particles of stardust like everything else, thereby irrelevant in the grand scheme of things? Or, am I relevant? Does my life mean anything, when you get down to it?

In fact, as I said at the beginning, everyone is in search for purpose, for a sense of value, for wondering why it’s important to get up in the morning and do anything. This universal truth, whether recognized consciously or not, is a defining characteristic of being human.

Which brings us to the fundamental question of where this comes from. Nebulae (exploding stars) cast out massive amounts of energy and matter into the cosmos, afterwards collecting as building blocks for things like plants, animals, rocks and rivers. And us. Us We? being the only result that wonders if we’re relevant and where that relevancy comes from.

Absent a universal truth (which is one way of saying there is a fact that exists behind all other facts or all other feelings or all other assumptions), we’re just accidents. Accidental results of physical, chemical and biological forces that have no stake in the game. We are born, survive, procreate (possibly) and die. That’s it. Or is it?

But, there’s this voice, or echo of a voice, that rumbles around somewhere in our consciousness that says there’s more to the story.

The anti-theist, one who has faith that there is no supernatural force apart from the physical, chemical or biological just mentioned, will insist that this voice or echo is merely psychological wish-fulfillment, a search for ultimate meaning when there is none. Philosophers have followed this logic like a thread, leading to a conclusion. It terminates in something called nihilism (“life is meaningless”), perhaps the subject of another piece. Feel free to look it up.

Some of us decide that this is all too complicated. It’s much easier to just go about our lives and do the best we can. Many of us choose to either disregard the voice or echo, or to suppress it, not wanting to see where it might lead.

I should know. Like many of us, I heard the voice/echo many, many years ago, at times listening and wondering, at other times dismissive and unwilling to follow the thread so see where it ended up. Of course, I found a lot of meaning in my life through my family, friends, profession, participation in causes and so on. But, I didn’t fully confront the question of why. I didn’t fully confront the question of whether I actually had a fundamental purpose that underlay all other purposes.

And then, as hard as it was, I followed the thread, bit by bit, struggle after struggle, often reluctant to learn what was just around the next bend. But, persistence was born by need and, in the end it paid off beyond all of my expectations.

Dear friends who may be reading this, my hope and prayer is that you seek the voice or its echo and look for the thread that will take you on a journey where you will discover the answer in your search for meaning.