Finding meaning

I go through periods that I call "so what?"

You know, nothing really matters. The world is pointless and absurd, and therefore so are our endeavors. Or dreams and goals and actions and emotions.

Hopelessness and depression. What else to call it?

"So what?"

A couple of months ago I dropped out of school, in despair of the job market. See, I wanted to be a history professor. Or, really, I wanted to be a historian, surrounded by that which I love, the human journey, the mysterious corners of a thousand years ago, the reasons that Reagan became president (and what that event wrought thereafter). The globe is beautiful. Right there is the Mediterranean. Do you know how much happened there which made the current world possible?

See England? Voltaire loved it and wrote about it. He inspired people who ended up doing good and terrible things because of what he wrote and said. Rousseau, same time period, French, inadvertently inspired revolutionary movements not only in the United States, but in South America as well.

It really does matter.

It matters because it's interesting. Inspirational. Terrible. It makes *today* seem more *worthy* of my energy. I don't want to just wake up each day, go to work, float through it, pay my bills, go home and eat a lot of food before going to bed again.

I don't care if I become a history professor. But I am going to study history. If you and I live long enough, you can, if you choose, call me Dr. Werling someday.

The drive for finding meaning leads some to church, some to charity, some to career.

I found it ages ago, back in World History class. 12th grade. Mrs. Barbara Murdoch is one of my saints. I'd love to have a photograph of her to place near my altar, so I may show her respect. I should find her and tell her that. She doesn't know how much she shaped my sense of wonder, my love of academics, my interest in living.

Peace and all good,
Andrew