I wonder if it is accurate to speak of a “loss” of meaning in our lives. Or, for that matter, I wonder if it is accurate to speak of “finding” meaning. These words, losing and finding, imply that meaning is “out there,” perhaps waiting, or hiding, and one need only look in the right places to find it. Certainly, this is how many of us respond to the desire for meaning in our lives. We spend our time in an anxious search for the right vocation, the right job, the right spouse, the right home—all in the hopes of finding meaning there.
The more “spiritual” person will, of course, recognize inadequacies in this pursuit. He will know that he cannot find ultimate meaning in something finite. But his assumption remains that what is wrong in his search is the object. It will probably not occur to him to call into question the very search itself. He will think that he need only direct his attention to the Infinite and surely, surely, then he will find his meaning. He simply needs to look in the right place.
This inevitably leads to frustration. Perhaps he will experience momentary relief, unburdened from the expectation of finding meaning in finite realities. But the burden doubles when he experiences dissatisfaction even in the Infinite. Now he knows
where he should find meaning, and yet he still feels an oppressive sadness and dreariness. The consecrated religious, for example, is told that her life is bearing supernatural fruit in people’s lives. Beautiful. Yet she remains unmoved. The burden is now made heavier for her as she begins to lose hope of ever finding meaning, if even the Infinite fails to provide it for her.
If the Infinite can be “found,” it is not the Infinite. It is not the idea of the Infinite that gives us meaning, but the Infinite itself.
The error is not in searching for meaning in the wrong place; the error is in the very searching itself. In his Introduction to Christianity, Ratzinger perceptively identifies the futility of finding meaning in something for which we can search:
Meaning is the bread on which man, in the intrinsically human part of his being, subsists. Without the word, without meaning, without love he falls into the situation of no longer being able to live, even when earthly comfort is present in abundance. Everyone knows how sharply this situation of “not being able to go on any more” can arise in the midst of outward abundance. But meaning is not derived from knowledge. To try to manufacture it in this way, that is, out of the provable knowledge of what can be made, would resemble Baron Munchausen’s absurd attempt to pull himself out of the bog by his own hair.... Meaning that is self-made is in the last analysis no meaning. Meaning, that is, the ground on which our existence as a totality can stand and live, cannot be made but only received.
In searching for meaning, we limit ourselves to the “provable,” to what can be called up at will and forced to present itself. But to do this is to shrivel the true longing of the human heart, and so to fail to approach the object of our longing with appropriate reverence. If the Infinite can be “found,” it is not the Infinite. It is not the idea of the Infinite that gives us meaning, but the Infinite itself.
When a man looks at a woman, certainly he has an idea of her. He perceives her physical beauty, her personal attributes, her unique gifts and characteristics. All of these can be called upon concretely in his memory, and he can articulate them precisely to a friend whom he meets later. But it is also possible for this man to perceive the woman herself, not solely his idea of her. This happens not because the man finally gains enough information, but because the woman, perceiving in the man one to whom she can entrust herself, chooses to reveal herself to him. It is an act of freedom on the part of the woman, not an act of force on the part of the man. His only act is that of reception. And what he receives cannot be communicated to another through the giving of information, because what he has received is not an idea, but a person.
Ratzinger argues that man cannot find meaning in what he can know because the deepest meaning of the world and of our lives is communion. And so only one capable of living in communion with another, of receiving the gift of another, is able to find meaning. The one who desperately tries to find meaning in his life by thinking the right things will, for that very reason, be frustrated.
The challenge, then, for us who want to experience the meaningfulness of our lives is to become people capable of living in communion. This is a particular challenge for those of us living in a world saturated by screens. We surround ourselves with devices that re-present reality to us in a mediated form so that it can be more easily accessible. Our relationships, our music, our experiences of beauty, etc., are all turned into digital code and projected electronically onto our screens. This allows us, seemingly, to keep everything in our lives more securely in our grasp. We no longer have to wait for a concert to hear our favorite songs. We are no longer frustrated by the contingencies of nature when we want to see a majestic sunset or mountain range. Our family and friends are forever within reach electronically, able to be contacted whenever we want to share an experience. Indeed, it would seem that if meaning is to be found in the experience of communion, our technology offers the best possible solution to the problem of meaninglessness.
Instead, however, our technology has only aggravated the problem. Everything about our screens encourages us to live in a world of ideas and images, rather than in a world of personal relationships. By seemingly making all of reality representable by digital code, our devices have created a world in which “ungraspable” is a word without content. Everything, it seems, is able to be grasped—or at least it ought to be. Everything ought to be able to be turned into information that one can communicate precisely and immediately to another. There is no need to wait for the revelation of another; no need to adopt the posture of reverential receptivity; no need to be dependent on another’s gift for the fulfillment of our desires. Everything is perceived as capable of being laid bare before our eyes.
Surrounded by screens on all sides, our perception has been reduced to mere ideas, and our interior dispositions have been reduced to anxious impatience. Quite simply, we will not wait. We have lost the capacity to endure, which alone makes us capable of suffering the in-breaking of another’s world into my own. And this alone makes us capable of living in communion. It does not matter how much we surround ourselves with others’ digital presence; as long as that other imposes no inconvenience upon me, I will never experience the joy of communion with him. I will remain locked within the confines of my own mind.
The more our world is formed by screens, the more incapable we become of suffering our human need for communion. Whenever we do experience the inherent poverty of human existence, we anesthetize ourselves to it. It need only bother us for a second, only as long as it takes to look at our phones and scroll through the endless images on our screens, dulling the felt awareness of our neediness. The experience of desire no longer awakens awareness that fulfillment is to be sought in something outside of ourselves and that it can only come to us as a gift. Rather, it has become a technological problem, something to be overcome by asserting more control and avoided whenever we cannot do so.
It is no wonder, then, that in desiring to find meaning in our lives, our response is to anxiously search for it, abetted by devices that promise immediate resolution. It is how we have grown accustomed to live in a technological world. We cannot imagine something outside of our neatly controlled world. Rather than looking in a lover’s eyes to discover who we are, we look at a screen, to what can be computed. We look at “likes,” “followers,” “views,” etc. “Meaning” no longer means the revelation of who I am in the light of love and communion, but rather comes from favorable reactions to the images I project.
A world wholly saturated by technology is a symptom of the loss of meaning that arose from our turning away from the Gaze of the Divine Lover and turning towards ourselves. The profound irony is that this simultaneously reinforces that loss of meaning by disposing us to seek only what we can grasp for ourselves. The rediscovery of meaning, then, requires nothing less than an about turn. Only the poor in spirit will “find” meaning in their lives, because only they have learned the proper response to their poverty: not in asserting control, but in trusting to love, thus disposing themselves to receive a gift.
