There is a local band I love, who does a beautiful performance of the song “Is That All There Is” (Lieber & Stoller). I think about that song from time to time, and being a grandma-aged woman, I find it an interesting way to see life. Certainly as you get older, you realize you’ve experienced many of the things you looked forward to. Sometimes those experiences don’t come anywhere near what you imagined they would be. And so it’s easy to think life will just not deliver what we had hoped it would.
But then I wonder if it’s not life that should be different, but maybe we’re the ones that need to see things differently. It’s easy to see the metaphorical fires in life. They seem to be everywhere. But what about the possibilities that are left un-mined in everyday life. The opportunities to converse with a child, and witness a pearl of wisdom in their thinking. Seeing a young man stop in a parking lot to help an elderly person having trouble getting their groceries in the car. Finding an author who conveys in their writing that they understand what we thought were our own, very personal views of life. And even the perfect cake that we made, that brings us more joy than we expected.
Life can be startling in its cruelty, and we can experience things we never deserved to experience. But what if we stop waiting for life to meet our hopes, our expectations. What if we set out to find and see the beauty that exists in the places that don’t take much space on the world’s stage. The seemingly small and hidden places that don’t call out to us to be noticed. Maybe this is the way we find meaning in life.
If you have moved beyond your youth, you might have discovered that finding meaning in life is an individual responsibility. On a soul-level, we can be fed by these small, beautiful moments, and in doing so, contribute our own meaning to the world around us.