More about meaning

Sarah here again. Am staying home again today as my boy is really struggling and needs me around. I was just reading back over Dave's blog about the meaning of life and all that and wanted to add my thoughts.

I look back at our life together and see that we have been on a continuous quest for meaning for the last 20 odd years which has led to a lot of fun experiences and a few strange looks at times! I have spent a lot of very powerful weekends and evenings on Landmark Education courses, did the Alpha course which led me to get clear that I was definitely not a Christian and more recently the Quaker Quest to see if I was a Quaker. Being a Quaker did call to me in certain respects but I'm afraid that without being offensive the dress code did put me off a bit especially the bad jumpers and tweedy skirts! I have also spent a weekend at a brilliant Buddhist monastery with my friend Shari on the pretense of learning meditation. I did make people laugh when I came back and said I was surprised to find out that meditation did seem to involve staring at a wall for most of the weekend, but that it was a very nice wall! I have also read endless books and have to say that even at the age of 45 I am still god damn curious about life and the miracle of it all. These days I would probably say that Buddhism and Quakerism are the things that call to me most but my enquiry is definitely not over. A couple of months ago I was looking at a Facebook page of a gorgeous man who used to work at Landmark called Nick Klyne and he had written against his "religious views" that "there was something out there somewhere a bit like the X Files". I can only concur with this view. To me all the different religions are all different ways of getting to the same thing and they are all equally valid - it is just a shame that so much of the time is spent arguing in the world about who is "right", but then that's human beings for you!

Because of what has been happening recently with Dave I have been reflecting back over my life and was this morning remembering when I did the Landmark Advanced Forum in about 1999 I think. In those days (I don't know about now) the course was about generating a purpose for your life based in possibility rather than your stories and interpretation of yourself. I think the course lasted 3 or 4 days then and I struggled to find a meaning for myself other than my commitment to be loving towards people for the first couple of days. However, at a certain point I invented a new possibility for myself. Because of the time that has passed I cannot remember the exact wording I used but it was something like "I am the possibility of being bold and courageous, an unstoppable stand for people". I can remember standing on the stage and saying this out loud to the 100 or so people on the course and the course leader (a phenomenal guy called David Ure) said that he really got a sense of it and how powerful I was. I was shocked because at the time, he seemed like an extraordinarily powerful person and I thought of myself as a very small insignificant person. The reason I was thinking of it this morning was that the actual phrase came to me out of nowhere at the time and yet now I can see how I have been that a lot in the last ten years around all sorts of things happening in my life and especially the current situation with Dave's illness. Even more reason to have the thought that there is something out there somewhere!

And back to the meaning of life. I can see now that as Dave has already said my life with him and Emma has given me all the meaning that anyone could ever need. There really is nothing else to go and look for that could make it any more special than the relationship that we three have. Nothing to do and nothing to be - we have all that we need. This doesn't mean that I will stop being curious about life because that is a big part of who I am and no doubt I will go exploring all sorts of things in the future but for now all we need is each other. That's quite enough meaning and purpose for anyone.