  You are here: John Clark Online > Ezine > Treating a Meaning Junkie (2) Treating a Meaning Junkie (2)May 11, 2005 To those who kindly sent me recipes - thanks. With your help, I might yet be converted from a meaning junkie to a Brussels sprouts junkie. But then again, I might not. This morning I came across a quote from Rabbi Harold Kushner. In When All You've Ever Wanted Isn't Enough: The Search for a Life that Matters, he makes the point I expressed ineptly in my last ezine: When we stop searching for the Great Answer, the Immortal Deed which will give our lives ongoing meaning, and instead concentrate on filling our individual days with moments that gratify us, then we will find the only possible answer to the question, What is life about? It is not about writing great books, amassing great wealth, achieving great power. It is about loving and being loved. It is about enjoying your food and sitting in the sun rather than rushing through lunch and hurrying back to the office. It is about savoring the beauty of moments that don’t last, the sunsets, the leaves turning color, the rare moments of true human communication. It is about savoring them rather than missing out on them because we are so busy... The author of Ecclesiastes spent most of his life looking for the Grand Solution, the Big Answer to the Big Question, only to learn after wasting many years that trying to find one Big Answer to the problem of living is like trying to eat one Big Meal so that you will never have to worry about being hungry again. There is no Answer, but there are answers: love and the joy of working, and the simple pleasures of food and fresh clothes, the little things that tend to get lost and trampled in the search for the Grand Solution to the Problem of Life and emerge, like the proverbial bluebird of happiness, only when we have stopped searching. When we come to that stage in our lives when we are less able to accomplish but more able to enjoy, we will have attained the wisdom that Ecclesiastes finally found after so many false starts and disappointments.
Becoming "less able to accomplish and more able to enjoy" - that's the challenge. Ecclesiastes was up to it. But the ultimate mystery - how to make Brussels sprouts palatable - proved beyond him. Read other ezine issues
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