We are survivors of events large and small – violent cosmic collisions and subtle genetic mutations, the death of countless suns and the birth of countless cells, the splitting of continents and the splitting of atoms. Through it all, we evolved as creatures with a closed consciousness that requires us to give meaning to our survival. It will not come as gifts of grace dropped from the callous hand of the universe. It cannot be found ready-made in good books and great teachers, or bought for the price of an Ivy League course, or sold by Silicon Valley in a ChatGPT query. That meaning is not something we get but something we do, that it is as close as love and humility as its reasons, may be a great gift and a great work of life.
Ursula K. Le Guin (October 21, 1929–January 22, 2018) boils down the onus and expands the gift with a beautiful passage from her 1975 story “Science Fiction and Mrs. Brown,” which was later included in her best collection. The Language of the Night: Essays in Literature, Science Fiction, and Fantasy (public library).
With the eye of the human story as the beating heart of the life account we call art, he writes:
What good are all the things in space, if there is no subject? It's not that humanity is that important. I do not think that Man is the measure of all things, or even of most things. I don't think Man is the end or end of anything, and he certainly isn't the center of anything. What we are, who we are, and where we are going, I do not know, and I do not believe anyone who claims to know, except, perhaps, Beethoven, in the last movement of the last symphony. All I know is that we are here, and that we know the truth, and that we must be careful – to listen. Because we are not things. That is important… And for us, nature, the Great Thing, its tireless burning sun, its revolving galaxies and planets, its rocks, the sea, the fish and the ferns and the cypress trees and the furry little animals, all have become servants. As we are part of them, they are part of us. Bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh. We are their mind.
In this sense, the meaning of life is less a postulate than a poem. Half a lifetime later, Le Guin would make a fine distinction between how science describes the universe and the poetry that touches it. Knowing that we are involved in the universe and incorporating it into ourselves, by touching that knowledge, holding it as the most important thing in our life, may be a solution beyond the definition of meaning.
Complete with some great ideas about the meaning of life from Mary Oliver, Oliver Sacks, Loren Eiseley, Maya Angelou, and Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and revisit Le Guin on how to live life to the fullest.
