The meaning of writing about meaning

Putting Margaret down for a nap, I found myself in baby jail, trapped underneath a lightly sleeping two year old, afraid to move a fraction of an inch, and thus free to ponder the great verities.

What did I ponder? I wondered why it has been impossible for me to write all week. Not just all week but my whole life. Since high school I have struggled unsuccessfully to find an hour a day to be alone with my thoughts. To spend just a little bit of time every day thinking about one thing: what is the meaning of my life?

Today at work my colleague Jeff asked me why I loved the Frankl book so much. I told him that all my life, the thing that has seemed the most urgent to me is to answer this question: what is the meaning of my life? But somehow I have felt it was illegitimate to think about it. As a child, when I asked the question, I got answers that Tedlow would characterize as, “Shut up, he explained.” Somehow I came to feel that the question was a toxic combination of self-indulgent, dangerous, and useless. So I explored it in stolen moments--after homework was done, dishes were done, after I’d finally gotten off the phone with my friends and boyfriend, but before bed time. That is to say, never. And then I read this book and I found that there was a whole school of thought that found meaning to be the primary driver of mankind. Eureka! And furthermore meaning could be found in a concentration camp--I didn’t have to make millions of dollars and retire in order to start thinking about meaning. This book was a revelation. But I have still found it awfully hard to make time to do what I find most meaningful--think about meaning. Talk about the meaning of life, etc.

As I lay there underneath Margaret, I was itching to get upstairs and start writing. But I wondered, why can’t I just lie here and think? Why do I need to go upstairs and write? What is the meaning of writing about meaning?

Writing is clarifying. I generally have a jumble of confused and conflated thoughts and writing does for them what a hairbrush does for tangled hair. So first it helps me communicate with myself.

Second, writing can be shared, and shared differently than conversation. Sometimes conversation helps me communicate with myself, is a hairbrush for tangled thoughts. But sometimes it adds to the tangle. You get different reactions to written than to spoken thoughts. So it’s a different way of communicating with others.

Third, there’s something permanent about writing. Not that I believe that people will read what I wrote after I am dead, not an immortality thing. It’s more for myself. That I can go back later and see what I thought. It’s like a personal map. I don’t want to forget where I’ve been.

I have today in three different ways had the thought that it’s time for me to make the hour or two I want to spend every day writing about meaning a priority. Time to stop treating it like a useless or dangerous self indulgence. I had the thought when I was brushing my teeth: I need to write and exercise an hour every day. Two hours I don’t have but can find. Then in the conversation with Jeff. Then when trapped under Margaret. And now in fact...