105-2008-05-07

NOTE: The following essay has been written twice.  I first attempted to make it accessible to everyone by making it generic.  But it was really an essay directed to a specific friend with a specific challenge and so I thought the first draft was too vague.  So I rewrote it to make it an essay directly targeted at him.  That made it too specific and too personal for all of you.  However, he has given me permission to print this draft of it, making him a ‘generic professor’ somewhere out there, and now it holds relevance for anyone who might read it.  I believe it is some of the most important thinking I have done in some time.

What IS the Point?
By W. Owen Thornton

A friend of mine is a university professor somewhere in Canada.  There he brilliantly leads his life as the head of a department teaching and leading.  First let me say that I admire him greatly for all he has achieved in his life.  Had I to live my life over again, I would be more like him.  If I had a do-over, I would have found philosophy at the same time he found his discipline, and together we’d have been professors these long years.  Where I failed in my career path he has succeeded.  He is tenured and I’m only now going to school in philosophy after years of being lost in the wilderness.

Initially I say that it is shocking to me that someone who would seem to have so much of his life together would come to a point in his life where he would be asking a question like, “What is the point?”  But I know I shouldn’t be shocked because I think nearly everyone comes to that place eventually.  None of us is immune to it.  Maybe what I’m feeling is a genuine sadness for my friend because I know what it is like to ask that question (or similar ones) and not be able to come up with a very good answer.  It’s a terrible place to be and I would “will” it that he would not be in that place.  But … there he is.  And so, after a conversation with my friend which further clarified some of his challenges, I will now do the human kindness thing and see if I can help answer some of his challenges from the various perspectives we have taken here in this weblog.

“What is the point?” is a question with an unspoken ending.  It is really asking “What is the point of my waking up in the morning doing what I do?”  Before embarking on the specifics of this question and what it means for my friend, I feel required to address the theoretical issues of what is going on in this real-life scenario.  First, I believe introspection in our society is far too rare.  And for those of us who arrive at an introspective time in our lives, it is often not well tolerated by others who want us to pick up our socks and get on with life.  Some introspection is what being human is all about, if we but knew that fact.

The problem with, “What is the point?” is that the question doesn’t allow us to come up with a satisfactory answer.  Therefore it is not that helpful in the introspective collage.  “What is the point?” seems to direct us to two pretty poor answers.  First there is the easy answer, which remains erroneous: “There is no point.”  Second there is the ignorant but somewhat better answer, which equates to nothing more than a shoulder shrug combined with a hapless, “Eh!”  This answer reveals that there may be a point, but we haven’t got a clue what it might be.  Neither answer helps us find what we’re looking for in our lives when we ask, “What is the point?”  And the answer we’re looking for is finding meaning in our lives.  If we desire to find meaning in our lives we need to begin to ask better questions that will compel our minds to give answers where we will begin to once again see the point.

In terms of early modern philosophy (1600s) “What is the point?” leads to the very skepticism promoted by Montaigne, and which Rene Descartes fought against when he attempted to defeat skepticism by rebuilding the foundation of knowledge on God by using the cogito: “I think, therefore I am.”  Descartes believed that the rising skepticism of his day not only required a hearing, but demanded a response because he felt skepticism was dangerous to human kind and to our relationship with God.  If nothing matters, we really don’t have any reason to wake up in the morning, and Descartes knew, as I believe, that there is ALWAYS a reason to wake up in the morning.

“What is the point?” allows total skepticism to thrive and this must not be tolerated by any of us.  If we have a friend whom we love and we hear them using this kind of language is it up to us to help them to help themselves refocus their compass so that they can once again find meaning in their lives.  I have read Frankle’s “Man’s Search for Meaning,” and I can tell you that if a person can find a reason to live his/her life in a Nazi death camp, we can find meaning in our lives whether it’s being a second year university student taking philosophy or a tenured professor.

So, the result of this ‘theory’ is that we need to ask better questions than, “What is the point?”  I’ll return to this in a moment.

To help you understand the situation more fully, my friend teaches liberal arts.  Universities encourage scholarly subjects which do not guide students towards a specific career whereas folks in the real world wonder “what is the point.”  An internal battle ensues for my friend because s/he would like to teach what he does while appeasing the others who want him to make a practical contribution towards the student’s education.  My friend is a gifted teacher and administrator.  I believe he has a true sense of his own worth, but I also believe his efforts are not recognized and therein lay a part of the problem.  Students come and go, papers are graded, marks are dispensed and little is seen in regards to the impact in their lives.  The administration knows he does his work and like many work environments the good employee is ignored while those who don’t do their work well get the ‘attention’ whether they like that attention or not.  So thousands of students are tested, the department runs smoothly, courses are taught, grades are submitted on time, extracurricular work is done which makes the university look good … all these things are what’s supposed to be achieved, but there is no good word, no follow-up … no appreciation and definitely no pat on the back.  The time when you might hear about something is when something has not gone well.  Administration pays attention to mistakes, but fails to recognize accomplishments.

So, dear reader, you need to hear that I completely understand why someone would ask, “What is the point?” under these circumstances.  Oh, and lest you think that I believe that everything would go away if my friend received a pat on the back … well I’m not that naïve.  “What is the point?” is not about to be completely solved with a pat on the back by the boss.  It’s not ALL about the rewards.  They would help.  They would alleviate the situation … but they wouldn’t solve things entirely.  Sadly life is not that simple.

Two paragraphs above I said a large part of the problem is a lack of recognition and then I said that being recognized by administration is not the be all and end all of solving our problem.  There is a second ‘body’ that isn’t recognizing my friend’s achievements.  Sadly that person is my friend.  This is also a tragically normal syndrome.  In the book “Discover Your Sales Strengths” authors Smith and Rutigliano talk about the 31 predominant themes people have.  (Remember from early essays that they have interviewed hundreds of thousands of people from different walks of life through the Gallop organization, asking them millions of total questions to come up with their ideas about how we operate as a species!)  Of the 31 themes, we excel at five of them.  These themes are how we behave and why.  They are our greatest gifts.  We know these aspects of ourselves so well they are like four-lane highways.  We travel along them often.  Mid-range themes might be like two-lane roads, while the last five themes might be like dwindling tracks in the wilderness.  Smith and Rutigliano argue against the commonly held theme that employees should be well rounded.  They say that regardless of what the lower five themes in our lives are no amount of training will bring those themes up to ‘average.’  We fail to do those kinds of things because we hate doing them and because we don’t see the point!  They tell the story of the crackerjack salesperson who could sell igloos to Eskimos but who hated to fill out the paperwork for the orders.  He knew how to do it, he just hated doing it.  Finally the company hired an administrative assistant to do his paperwork and once they had freed him from having to do this tedious task the salesperson went out and sold that much more product which paid for the assistant, gave him a hefty bonus and made the entire company more prosperous.

They go on to note that when asked about our five best themes in our lives, people often struggle to come up with any gifts.  This is the taken for granted syndrome.  People believe because their gifts are so second nature that their gifts have little value.  They come to erroneously believe that everyone must have those gifts and therefore they don’t see them as an asset.  But ask people to make a list of shortcomings and the list might be longer than their arm!  I have another friend who found this situation to be absolutely true.  In a church of over 2,000 members they decided to conduct a faith skills survey over a couple of months.  The people whom they had a hard time getting a survey response from were those who were afraid they had no spiritual gifts to offer!

It is difficult to know how to help someone become realistic about their giftedness.  Personally, I have had an eye-opener in my spiritual life.  People who consider themselves Christians are supposed to be saints first, sinners second.  Most often they see themselves the other way around.  I know that I make a first-class sinner.  Lately, I’ve become tired of being a sinner first.  I’m a pretty good person.  I’m not perfect, but I’m pretty good.  In fact, I’ll wager I am more of a saint than I am a sinner.  In the reformed faith, Calvin created the prayer of confession as part of the order of worship.  It was designed to acknowledge that we are sinners and that we need God to help us overcome that nature inside of us.  But Calvin also felt it was wrong to dwell on our sin.  If we are ‘holier than thou’ because we acknowledge our sins over our saintliness, we fall victim to pride.  Therefore it is better and appropriate to see ourselves as saints who err, rather than sinners who occasionally get things right.

In other words to fail to recognize our gifts and to dwell on our failings is theologically erroneous (a sin) and it is simply plain WRONG to fail to acknowledge our giftedness … our saintliness.  We need to give our heads a shake and wrap our minds around that!  (And you’re hearing this from a person who until a week or so ago lived his life this way, so I KNOW what I am talking about!)

Reframing the Question

And now, I’d like to look at reframing the question, “What is the point?”  I’m convinced by things I have read that if a human asks themselves an inner question that the mind feels compelled to go about finding a meaningful answer.  Ask bad questions.  Get bad answers.  Reframe your question to get the answer you’re really asking yourself, and you may begin to get better answers.

And so, I would reframe “What is the point?” with something like …

“What kinds of things do I do where I find meaning in my life?”
“Where do I find meaning in my life?”
“How do I go about finding meaning in my life?”

If we start asking questions like these, we begin to have introspective thoughts which redirect our minds to meaningful answers that lead us out of the “What is the point” syndrome.  I think therein lies another thing about, “What is the point?”  It’s a treadmill question that doesn’t yield a good answer and so we keep asking that question of ourselves waiting to see if we can come up with some kind of meaningful answer, and the problem is, there is no specific and meaningful answer to that question.

Now things get really tricky.  First we have to give ourselves permission to win.  In other words, when the mind comes up with meaningful answers to the above questions we have to pay attention.  We cannot ‘dismiss’ these good answers. 

Now I need another sidebar to talk about honoring ourselves and the answers we come up with.  In fact, I need to tell one sidebar to lead to another sidebar before I get to my main point.  My friend said that he could not succeed because he could never be done.  For example, in preparing for a lecture my friend said that he could never succeed, because there would always be another essay/book/article he could read that would help him prepare for that lecture which would make the lecture that much better.

Now let me say that we need to understand that ‘Being Done’ is a fallacy.  We are never done.  Businesspeople often never have enough or all of the information they require before they feel compelled to make a decision.  To wait for all the facts would force the decision to be too late to be effective.  That’s one perspective on the ‘being done’ fallacy.  Here’s a very theoretical one.  We should celebrate the fact that we can never be done.  We should celebrate the fact that we work in such a field that is so rich we can never be done.  This gives us the motive to wake up and read another essay/book/article because it leads us to a new place of learning and growth and understanding.  This is the exciting part of the world we live in. 

Personally, in thinking about this line of reasoning, I believe I never want to be done.  If I’m done, I’m at the end.  There is no more.  And if there is no more and that’s what I love to do … now, perhaps I really do have a reason to ask, “What is the point?” or at the very least, “Now, where do I go from here?”  To return, for a moment to our earlier meanderings perhaps we have a third answer to “What is the Point?” which might be our best yet: “The point is the point!”  Still to rework a beer advertisement metaphor this answer might taste better, but it still isn’t satisfying!

And herein lays my sidebar to my sidebar.  My friend spoke to me about an exciting essay he had recently edited.  In this I want to point out that it’s okay to love what you love.  He spoke to me about it with enthusiasm and passion.  But, he wanted to know the point of his reading it.  It didn’t change the world.  It didn’t matter.  It felt like to him, that only about six people in the world would care about this content.

The thing is the essay meant something to him.  It made him come alive.  It made him feel vital and excited about his subject area and his craft of teaching.  It added value to him which will in turn add value to his teaching which adds value to the students he teaches, his peers across the country and the world and with his team at work and the administrators who will one day wake up and come to care about his contributions.  It was important to him and therefore it is important.

Seriously I wish I was a better success at many things I’m writing about.  In truth, I think about three weeks ago I couldn’t have written this essay because … I didn’t have these kinds of answers, so I’m hot upon this subject matter for sure, but I am sure as hell no complete expert in living my life this way either … yet.  Exploring these very issues are the reasons that both compelled me to create the www.thehumankindnessproject.com  project and to go back to school in philosophy.

Here’s my personal example of doing what you need to do.  I remember having a recent conversation with a writer friend about an upcoming article I wanted to write for www.thehumankindnessproject.com .  I have had other people tell me that I should write how-to articles because that’s what people are interested in reading about.  I have had all sorts of friendly feedback about what I should write about and how I should do it, but the advice this writer friend gave me was the absolute best.  I told my friend that others had said I should write articles this way or that.  With those frameworks in mind for my upcoming theme, I found I didn’t want to write my next subject based on any of those strategies, sound though they might be.  And he turned to me and said, “I’m tired of writing what other people tell me to write.  Today I write about what I want to write about and in the way I want to write it.  If you have these different, clashing ideas which you think add up to some odd, but viable third point and you need to write that article that way … write it that way!”

Bravo!  Now I suppose that the other advice I have received might be the kind of advice that helps me write articles/essays that leads me to finding a publisher who puts me in a book where all these articles from the human kindness project earns a skillion dollars.  But doing what I have to do because I have to do it because that’s me … well … alas … that’s the way I have to write … isn’t it!  I don’t have a choice.  And … I’m beginning to become comfortable inside of my own skin because a friend gave me permission to be me.  So if you love an insightful article that only you and three other people in the world can appreciate and talk about … read it!  Love it!  Appreciate it!  Talk to your two friends about it.  Cherish it.  That’s you.  That’s who you are.  In this regard I would say to my friend, “I love you for it, old friend.  Please.  Love yourself enough to love you too … you and all your quirks and the rare, scholarly information that makes you my wonderful, unique friend!”  (There’s a point!)

And here’s something else to think about.  No one has any right to criticize that you love scholarly information in a rarified sphere.  I have one friend who reads World War II technical manuals about tanks and battleships.  I have another friend who can tell you to go to the page where you can find any answer to Dungeons and Dragons in well over a dozen different books.  And depending on the time of my life, I could have been able to quote lines from the original Star Trek, Star Wars (4 - 6) or Spaceballs!  Now I ask you what is the point of that?  The answer is that’s me memorizing lines from things I love.  It might be weird, but, hey!  It’s me!  Anyone who criticizes your love of ‘whatever’, exposes themselves to have their different, unusual thing that they love to be criticized and no one wants to open that kettle of fish!  If you can criticize others then they can criticize you.  That only seems fair.

To all of you I include YOU in my list of people who cannot criticize the things YOU love.  You cannot run them down because you are in turn running everything down about everything everyone else loves to do which doesn’t seem practical or relevant or perfect, or whatever we think we’re after here.  However, in saying that, if not allowing you to talk negatively about an aspect of your life prevents you from opening up to someone special and talking about these issues, you have to ignore that last comment.  Talking about these things is another way of processing all these thoughts and feelings inside.  Here’s another thought.  Whoever said that everything we think or do has to have a specific point?  If we believe that point then that too is a dangerous game to play!

Over the years I have come to discern that we have to feel worthy of hearing answers like that friend gave me: to write what I need to write.  A few years ago, I would have heard his response, and wrote the article the way other people told me I should have written it.  Today, I listen and have the confidence to do what is right for me.  I wrote it my way!

Low Ebb Times

I know a “What is the point?” question comes from someone at a low ebb time in their lives.  They have been down so long they can’t see that there is a way out.  And what’s worse is the only person who can do this work, the work of digging themselves out of their low spot, is the person asking the “What is the point?” question.  As an adult survivor of child abuse, I found it exceedingly unfair that after I had had my childhood stolen from me, and because of that I didn’t know how to live in the world, that the only person in the world who could re-parent me back to wellness was … me.  It took a lot of work.  (Some rare days even today, it takes a lot of work, but I’m getting better!)  At the time, my therapist was right when she said I should do little else other than work on my exercises to get well because by the end of the day I would be emotionally exhausted.  She was right.  I spent six months sleeping … a lot!  It is not fair that the person going through the tough times has to do the work of getting themselves back on track, but no one else can ever tell you what the point/meaning of your life is.  We can only offer you input to help you change your own compass.  You have to find meaning for you on your own.  (But I think you already know it, you’ve just been temporarily misdirected.  I think you simply need to let yourself see what you love, accept it and find the joy in it!  (But that can be so freaking hard to do!))

I think most of us who arrive at, “What is the point?” stages in our lives haven’t completely lost the point.  We know what excites us, and pleases us and challenges us.  We’ve just sort of temporarily forgot.  Maybe we have amnesia.  Maybe we begin to believe someone else telling us what SHOULD be important to us and we get derailed.  (Sometimes that other person can be our ‘own practical voice of reason’ (which can simply be dead wrong, by the way!)).  But being derailed is okay too.  We all get derailed at times in our lives.  The means on how we get to “What is the Point?” doesn’t matter.  What we do about it does!  My friend, there is a way out of “What is the point?”

To reiterate:

1. Reframe the question to ask where you find meaning in your life and you will get better answers.
2. Understand that to give in to what is the point is skepticism and skepticism is fallacious.  There IS always a point … we do know it internally, it’s just temporarily lost or buried.
3. Find ways to win by:
1. Getting recognized.
2. Recognizing your own achievements.
4. Recognize your gifts and accept them.  This one can be hard, but I hope I have presented some good things to think about why we should begin to do this!  Our unique giftedness is what makes us and the diversity is part of what makes the world a mystical magical place.  (And yes, you’re a part of the mystical, magical place.)
5. Release the sinner and embrace the saint whom you really are: know that to think otherwise is unhealthy.
6. Remember the world is unique and that each of us will find some small part of it fascinating in a way and to a degree that no one else may.  To criticize anyone’s search for knowledge means we begin a slippery slope where anyone’s about this ‘love’ means everyone else’s unique ‘love’ can be challenged and none of us wants that!  (Otherwise we won’t enjoy reading tank manuals or memorizing lines from movies.)  Everything we do is valid to us and that’s okay!  (see a future article 118 on judging versus accepting!)
7. Let yourself love what you love, even if it doesn’t seem to make sense because it doesn’t have to make sense.  We are both rational and irrational beings.  And yes, I know that does not survive the law of non-contradiction which states that two opposing forces cannot exist inside a single entity at the same time.  To which I will say, except for humankind!
8. Do what you need to do for you and don’t let anyone else mess you up!
9. It’s okay to be at low ebb … for a while.  Then you have to change your questions and start at number one so that once again, you know the point!
10. Know that there is someone out there worried about you and who loves you and accepts you for the way you are and is delighted to hear you talk about something unique that may only interest you!