Such a fool ...

I can't believe I am still such a fool. Even now, after all this time, there is a part of me that still yearns for God, still longs to find him, to experience him as real.

Yesterday, I started a new writing project, the first one in a long, long time. I was excited, gave it my all for almost the whole day, and it felt good. So tonight, after a long day of work, coffee with my dearest friend, take-out for dinner blah blah, I opened up yesterday's document to carry on writing. And I re-read it. And it was all crap. It sucked. All the pleasure and excitement I'd felt yesterday, all the dreaming and scene-planning just fell away in a heart beat. I used to be able to write, now I'm not sure I have a usable talent any more. It all feels wooden, contrived, cliched. And that tipped me into deep sadness and despair. Writing is the only area I have ever felt I had a chance of making good in, of perhaps doing something of worthwhile, lasting value. Now, along with all the other losses that come with middle-age, I'm facing the loss of the only real talent I have ever had.

So I took myself off for a bath, knowing I needed to weep, to somehow release this sadness from my spirit. And as I soaked and cried, I found that my grief extended far beyond the simple fact that maybe I'll never be any good as a writer. Yes, I grieved for that. But in the depths of the despair and pain, I found a deeper grief. It's hard to explain, but comes down to one simple and utterly unanswerable question:

Even if I was a good writer, what would be the point of it, anyway? It seems to me that life is essentially meaningless. What, I ask, is the Meaning of Life?

I'm NOT talking about what gives my life or your life individual meaning, like maybe I write good stories that move people emotionally. I'm talking about meaning on a global scale. On an individual level, I may feel good for a while about my achievement, and my readers may either laugh, or cry, and maybe they'll learn a little more about something. But in the end, life comes down to a seventy-something- year cycle in which we eat, we drink, we reproduce, and eventually, we die. Just like plants, or animals, or algae, or tapeworms. And when we're gone, we may be remembered by a few for a short while, but most of us will be forgotten within a decade or two unless we happen to be Hitler or Churchill or Ghandi or Mandela.

No, my question is what is the point of human beings as a species existing on this planet?

If the only point to our lives is simply to reproduce ourselves so that the species is perpetuated, then I really don't get it. If there is no higher purpose to human life as a whole on this planet, then what is the friggin' point of us existing at all? Some may say that we exist to help and serve others. Fine. So what are all the 'others' doing that is so important then? Why, like us, they're basically just getting through each day, doing what they need to do to stay alive and making sure that they to manage to reproduce themselves, so that they can leave more people behind who then have to do what they need to do to get through life themselves until they die, leaving behind yet more people ...and round and round it goes.

If that's all there is, it seems extremely pointless to me, even for those of us who do manage to have a nice time while we're on the planet.

So as I lay in the bath and wept and contemplated the awful emptiness of the existential abyss, I once again realized that what I wanted above all else--above my need to be able to write properly, above my need to get all my problems solved, above my need to be loved--what I yearned for most deeply of all was, shamefully, still 'God'. Meaning someone or something who exists beyond the limitations of this physical life, to show me that there IS life beyond birth and death, and that that life--whatever form it may take--is meaningful and eternal. I was horrified to discover that even after multiple disappointments, even after countless nights spent weeping and begging God to 'help me' know the reality of himself, even after at last making a start on the deconstruction of the faith that has proved so impossible to sustain over more than 25 years, after all this, I still hope for 'God'.

About a year ago, when talking to one of my dearest friends in all the world, I said to her that even though my faith had taken a huge knock, I wasn't going anywhere. If God wanted to find me, he knew where I was, and if he wanted me, he needed to come get me because I have spent almost all my adult life running after God, and never finding him in a way that allowed me to know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he is REAL.

And yet, I still cry, yearning and longing for something I'll never have. It's pathetic, really. How the hell do I get past this? Does one ever?

It's very sad.