The Counterintuitive Way to Find Meaning in Life

A lesson from the beautiful, humble cherry blossom

Photo by Mi Min on Unsplash

I’ve felt the fragility of life, the juxtaposition of birth and death, keenly over the past two weeks. My sisters and I are anticipating the birth of our newest family member, my niece’s child, any moment now. Meanwhile, one of my closest friends recently learned that her sister was in a coma after a bad accident and isn’t expected to survive. Weird as it sounds, though, maintaining an awareness of life’s fragility can help us live more deeply and meaningfully.

More than 55,000 people died in the February earthquake that devastated Turkey and part of Syria. The 2022 floods in Pakistan affected more than 33 million people—the equivalent of nearly the entire population of Canada—and killed close to 2,000. Somewhere between 500 and 3,000 Iranians have been killed in protests over the past few months. More than 8,100 people have been killed in the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Today, there are no fewer than two dozen countries involved in a war of one kind or another. Death is everywhere, all the time. Western culture just likes to pretend it’s not.

As devastating as COVID has been in the United States and Canada, that’s nothing compared to what it’s been like in developing countries. Yet nearly all of us are moving full-steam ahead after three years of being confronted with our mortality. Almost two years ago, I wrote a post imploring people not to go back to ‘normal’, yet collectively, we have been swept back up into the pace of the culture.

Those of us who can hug our loved ones today are mind-bogglingly lucky. There will come a time for all of us when we can’t, either because their body has given out, or ours has. While I often resist this truth (despite my practice, I’m quite attached to this human life), this awareness is a reminder—an encouragement, even—to hug the friend (and/or the tree), sing loudly off-key in the shower, and find compassion for myself and others.

Death and me: a brief history

When I was nine, my mother died. Although that loss devastated me, it also gave me an enormous gift: The understanding that, as I would say in high school and beyond, “Life is too short for bullshit.”

That understanding led to me become an activist and volunteer during the first wave of AIDS, when it seemed like everybody I knew was dying. I wasn’t afraid of talking about death; it had already touched me profoundly. The connections I made with people then, whether they were living with HIV, dying from AIDS, or filled with guilt for surviving, were raw, vulnerable and honest. There was zero bullshit involved.

Having that awareness—that life is short and that people can die young—formed me into someone who never understood the unquenchable desire for power over others or accumulating things. I knew the implied myth, that power, money or possessions could protect me from heartbreak, illness or death, was bullshit. All those denial tactics—hoarding wealth and belongings—seemed to me a distraction from actually living. If we only have such a short time here, then I wanted to spend it living fully.

It took another 20 years before I fully understood what that meant.

Waves in the ocean

Buddhists talk about each life form as both a droplet of water and part of the ocean. To carry the water metaphor further, birth is the emergence of a new wave; death is the outflow, when the wave returns to join the ocean. Yet most of us only notice the waves when the water is lapping at our ankles.

As I wrote for P.S. I Love You More Than Tuna several years ago:

We are all such fragile beings. From the vast perspective of space, our lifespan appear shorter than that of a cherry blossom. We live on a planet that spins 1040 miles per hour and hurtles through space at 67 times that rate—yet we share the illusion that we are standing still (or driving, or walking).

Sometimes beings are just here for a brief visit, as though they were passing through on a tour of the galaxy. The kicker is that we never know how much time we have ourselves or with the people we love. Why wouldn’t we make the most of every moment?

Death makes life valuable

Spring is my favourite season, not only because the weather is warmer, the days are longer, and flowers are abundant. What I love most about spring is the week when cherry blossoms are at their peak. For 50 weeks of the year, cherry trees nourish the ripening buds. Then comes the one week when the blossoms are at a peak, and just as quickly, another week when the petals fall and the cherry trees glow brown with shriveled husks.

For years, the brevity of cherry blossom season has been a reminder to value every moment I have.

As a species, we value what’s scarce, and in moments of imminent birth or death, we recognize just how precarious this human life really is. Often, in those moments, we become intensely present, which allows us to truly experience life rather than thinking about it conceptually. We may even commit to valuing each moment more deeply. And then, once our lives have resumed the Western rhythm of busy-ness and consumerism, we forget. Until the next time.

Carpe effing diem

How are we all not walking around with mouths agape, falling all over ourselves with wonder and awe at being alive? The number of factors that have to line up in order for a human life to happen is extraordinary. Yet many of us take this life for granted, along with the culture and comforts humans have created.

The dominant culture is essentially built around forgetting that, just as all of us were born, so too, we will all die someday. Whether that’s later this evening or in decades, no one knows. All of us will gain and lose people throughout our lives—until it’s time for our exit. We will experience joy at new births and grief at losses in the forms of people we love. In those moments, we will appreciate the fragility of what we are and what we have.

To be clear, “what we have” doesn’t mean money or status, which aren’t equally accessible to all. I’m talking about inhaling the scent of flowers (and cherry blossoms!), listening to a symphony of birds in the forest, or noticing the clouds passing in the sky. Feeling our heartbeat and our breath—and those of other people and animals. Listening to nature’s symphony in the forest. Marveling at a newborn’s hands or the repetition of patterns in nature. There are so many aspects of this life we take for granted, and each of them deserves for us to turn and face them fully.

To find meaning, choose depth over breadth

We can’t change our lifespans, or those of people we love. We can, however, choose to embrace deeply the experiences we’re handed, opening to joy, sadness, grief, laughter, romance, anger (and more), rather than water-skiing along the surface of life, yelling “YOLO!” en route to the next surface destination.

Like Thoreau, I want to suck the marrow from life (though I might have chosen a less carnivorous metaphor). I can’t do that if I’m constantly looking for the next thing, the better thing, or the exit ramp from challenges.

If this were the 17th century, I might be walking through the streets and ringing a bell, calling out “memento mori.” Because I’m a Gen X child of the ‘70s, though, in closing I’ll defer to the wisdom of Laura Nyro (though I’m also partial to the version by Blood, Sweat & Tears):

“And when I die and when I'm gone
There'll be one child born
In this world to carry on”

In the comments, please let me know which parts of this post resonate most with you.

Bonus interview

p.s. Last week, I had a great conversation with Wayne Jones of writingediting.ca about Living the Mess. Among other topics, we discussed my passion for ‘getting the inside right,’ which was the topic of my last newsletter.