“Dark have been my dreams of late,” King Theoden says, triumphing against depression as Gandalf literally shows him the light, “but I feel as one new-awakened.”
The more I read and live, the more I realize that the meaning of life is art. Centering art as the meaning of life entails the following prescriptions: 1) living harmoniously with everything around us, 2) investing in people, relationships, community, and culture, and 3) devoting oneself to a craft.
An interweaving of different accounts into a single narrative is a pleasantly useful definition of harmony. We practice harmony by living intentionally to minimize discord in our relationships with everything. We minimize discord by confronting problems instead of letting them fester into monsters. As a small, real-world example, give things the time they are due: instead of kicking off your shoes, take a few seconds to loosen the laces first. With people, developing harmony necessitates centering empathy and recognizing that humans are imperfect and irrational: we’ll always make stupid decisions, but empathy is there to protect our hearts from making hasty judgments.
I’d been doing an adequate job investing in culture (reading and watching movies), but only recently did I realize that the magic of life – plot – comes from people and relationships. Of course it does! This eureka moment, discovered in Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, felt so obvious that I can’t believe I hadn’t realized it earlier. Just like in books and movies, which hold our attention only when writers invest in the plot, so to in life: a satisfying life depends on well-developed relationships.
While enjoyment and inspiration can come from appreciating art (life), true satisfaction comes from creating (living) it oneself. (This is also simply known as giving). My specific devotions are writing and learning. They are the crafts I feel called to do. By ‘feel called to do,’ I mean that each day I commit some time to writing and learning, the call to action I feel in my chest, anxiety, is placated. This realization, anxiety as a call to action, finally took root in me because of Anxiety by Samir Chopra.
While my craft of writing is self-evident here, learning is also a fundamental part of who I am. It’s supported by the worldview expansion provided by appreciating culture, but it’s also powered by a feeling of awe and wonder. Here’s what I mean: I recently finished reading Hamlet – my first legitimate experience with Shakespeare. Apart from wanting to have some background knowledge for the Hamnet movie, my motivation for reading it was to develop an appreciation for Shakespeare, asking myself: why wouldn’t I want to experience one of mankind’s greatest artists? Put another way, a previously isolated node I’d had roaming around my brain is that I wish everyone could appreciate – as I do – the overwhelming beauty of The Lord of the Rings; I’m sure Shakespeare enthusiasts feel this way to the uninitiated. This has evolved itself into a personal commitment to lifelong learning, simply for the purpose of developing an appreciation for the human story.
(I then watched the 2009 movie adaptation of Hamlet featuring David Tennant as the titular Danish prince and was utterly blown away. Until then, I hadn’t fully conceptualized that unlike books, plays are written to be acted: I experienced Hamlet in a completely unique way than just having read it: the actors’ performances brought beauteous life into the often difficult-to-envision dialogue, personalities, and dynamics of the characters on the page. My appreciation of Shakespeare truly found its foundation in watching Hamlet come to life).
The clarity art has provided me is the meaning of life: I am meant to write and learn, to develop and document my appreciation of the human condition. When I’m consistent in my writing, I feel satisfied. When I slack, I feel anxious. A recognition of this and a devotion to it has liberated me. Art is magic, art is inspirational, art is always worth it.
The AM Intrigue 
Leave a comment