Alison Oatman

The Meanings of Life

January 16, 2019 by Alison Oatman Leave a Comment

Live as if you were living for the second time and had acted as wrongly the first time as you are about to act now!–Viktor Frankl

Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning belongs on a shelf with other short, powerful reads, such as Frederick Douglass’ Narrative, Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, and Elie Wiesel’s Night. These are the sort of books you can read in one sitting, yet that condense an enormous amount of wisdom between their covers without wasting a single word. They put their longwinded neighbors to shame.

On rereading Frankl’s book for the first time in twenty years, I was struck by his insistence that we have three ways to discover meaning in life: by creating a work or taking an action, by experiencing something or encountering someone, and by our attitude toward unavoidable suffering. “For the meaning in life differs from man to man, from day to day and from hour to hour,” he writes. “What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person’s life at a given moment.”

Therefore, there is no single “universal meaning” that we arrive at after finally breaking the code. Instead, there are multiple meanings of life–dozens, really, to suit us on our various paths and projects. And they cannot be just silly fixations, but they must take into consideration what life is asking of us and what our responsibilities are.

In our goal-driven society, it may seem that achievements are more important than relationships: Everyone is trying to be extremely useful. This is where Frankl gives the best sendup of ageism I’ve ever read: “In the past, nothing is irretrievably lost, but rather, on the contrary, everything is irrevocably stored and treasured,” he says. People tend to “overlook and forget the full granaries of the past into which they have brought the harvest of their lives: the deeds done, the loves loved, and last but not least, the sufferings they have gone through with courage and dignity.” Therefore, we should envy the elderly for their vast resources–not pity them!

I am particularly grateful to Frankl for his emphasis on the meaningfulness of suffering–“unavoidable” pain, that is, such as he faced in his years in the Nazi death camps. The way we respond to our misfortunes defines us. He quotes Rilke as saying, “How much suffering there is to get through!” Indeed, when we realize that suffering is nothing to be ashamed of and that it’s an unavoidable part of life, we come to terms with the fact that life is never going to be one big happy sunset the way it is in the movies.

A Glimpse of Things to Come?

January 10, 2018 by Alison Oatman Leave a Comment

A little over a month ago, my cousin woke me up in the middle of the night. She led me outside where the horizon was in flames. Neighbors were milling about on the street in their bathrobes. Careful not to wake her girls, I returned to my bedroom to retrieve the two most precious things inside: my cat and my computer. Then began the big wait: should we evacuate or stay put? The girls slept through the night and the adults (their parents and I) fretted away the immediate hours, and then the days, and then the weeks. Everything smelled of ash and we took to wearing surgical masks. School was cancelled indefinitely. The television anchors spoke with urgency at first and then, when the initial excitement was over, their speech patterns slackened.

I had moved to California at the beginning of October with the intentionally vague fear of earthquakes (a.k.a. The Big One).

Now, today, the rain fell with a vengeance, killing at least thirteen people in our area.

Whenever I get down about climate change and the way the planet will probably shake the human race off like a coat of fleas, I then think (like a know-it-all Buddhist) that all we ever had was the present moment anyway. What’s right here, right now.

As Milan Kundera once wrote, “There would seem to be nothing more obvious, more tangible and palpable than the present moment. And yet it eludes us completely. All the sadness of life lies in that fact.”

Amen.

Environmental Article of the Day: “Going Negative” by Elizabeth Kolbert

November 20, 2017 by Alison Oatman Leave a Comment

In the November 20th edition of “The New Yorker,” Elizabeth Kolbert asks if carbon-monoxide removal can save the world:

Carbon-monoxide removal is, potentially, a trillion-dollar enterprise because it offers a way not just to slow down the rise in CO2 but to reverse it. The process is sometimes referred to as “negative emissions”: instead of adding carbon to the air, it subtracts it. Carbon-renewal plants could be built anywhere, or everywhere. Construct enough of them and, in theory at least, CO2 emissions could continue unabated and still we could avert calamity. Depending on how you look at things, the technology represents either the ultimate insurance policy or the ultimate moral hazard.

Is this technological innovation our last chance? Or is it foolhardy to put faith in a “quick fix”–simply because it would require immediate action on a global scale?

One of the reasons we’ve made so little progress on climate change he (the physicist Klaus Lackner) contends, is that the issue has acquired an ethical charge, which has polarized people. To the extent that emissions are seen as bad, emitters become guilty. “Such a moral stance makes virtually everyone a sinner, and makes hypocrites out of many who are concerned about climate change but still partake in the benefits of modernity,” he has written. Charging the paradigm, Lackner believes, will change the conversation. If CO2 is treated as just another form of waste, which has to be disposed of, when people can stop arguing about whether it’s a problem and finally start doing something.

If carbon monoxide were viewed as just another waste product such as sewage or garbage, we could turn this mental deadlock around. After all, “We don’t expect people to stop producing waste. (‘Rewarding people for going to the bathroom less would be nonsensical,’ Lackner has observed.) At the same time, we don’t let them shit on the sidewalk or toss their empty yogurt containers into the street.”

Spend It, Shoot It, Play It, Lose It

August 2, 2017 by Alison Oatman Leave a Comment

And don’t, let me beg you, go with that awful tourist idea that Italy’s only a museum of antiquities and art. Love and understand the Italian people, for the people are more marvelous than the land.

…And I do believe that Italy really purifies and ennobles all who visit her. She is the school as well as the playground of the world.

–Philip Herriton in E.M. Forster’s novel “Where Angels Fear to Tread”

Philip Herriton is in desperate need of a drenching rain to strip away all of his petty niceties. In the Italian, he sees a sort of coarse, tobacco-spitting “noble savage” who awakens a keen sense of pleasure in all those who come to his shores. (It is unclear whether the cringe-worthy depictions of Italians in the book belong entirely to the author himself.) “You’re without passion; you look on life as a spectacle; you don’t enter it; you only find it funny or beautiful,” a character says to Philip at the end of the book.

I have a great quote on my fridge: “Spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place. Assume you write for an audience consisting solely of terminal patients. That is, after all, the case. What could you say to a dying person that would not enrage by its triviality?”

That’s Annie Dillard speaking. Good advice for all of us terminal patients. I think that’s what Philip means when he says Italy is both the school and the playground of the world. He means, get into the thick of it, really feel life, engage and don’t hold back. Risk discomfort for the sake of all the pleasure you can stand and at the expense of everything you think you should be doing. I say this at the risk of sounding like a bumper sticker or a greeting card. “Spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time.” I think Philip only feels like himself when he is in Italy.

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