Life, Life... Life

Last weekend I watched the movie 'The Tree of Life' and found myself unmoved.
Well, that's not strictly true. I found the concrete story engaging, but the attempts to reach for a  'bigger theme' irritating.
The movie seemed to be an attempt to place the short span of human life into the larger context of the universe - but images of outer space, cells dividing and even dinosaurs interspersed with scenes of swirling colors, light, sky and forests seemed to me like overkill.

An afterlife was imagined on film which made all wrongs right and took away the pain inflicted and suffered in earthly life, but I found it unsatisfying, unable as it was in its ephemeral lightness to counter the grittiness of the flesh and bone existence depicted.

After all this is the only side we know about, however incompletely, right?

This weekend, I saw the movie 'A Better Life'. This was a small movie which didn't try to draw any bigger circles than those implied by the situation depicted. It was the story of a Mexican-American boy on the edge of young adulthood, living with a father who was himself outside the fringes of social legitimacy. In the time they have together before he is deported, the father manages to teach his son lessons in ambition, perseverance, mercy, decency, faith, sacrifice and hard work. After the father is deported, his son has to decide whether to join mainstream society or fall into lockstep with the gang members who have begun to press in on him.We are never quite sure that he will, but he chooses the better life.

Coincidentally this past week, for the second time in his life, my son asked me "Have you ever thought what is the meaning of existence?" 

When he'd asked it the first time maybe a year ago my heart leaped, but this time it sank.
Suddenly I didn't want him grappling with this question for which I didn't have an answer, let alone the answer.
His father's theory is (and I quote): "You're born, you live, you die and there is not much meaning to it". His grandmother's theory is (verbatim): "It's a struggle to be born, a struggle to live, a struggle to die - and we'll know the meaning of it 'by and by'."

So what's the meaning of life? You're born, stuff happens to you, you feel stuff, you think stuff, you do stuff. Sometimes you stop and wonder about all the stuff, looking for patterns so that you can figure out what kind of stuff might happen next. And sometimes - in frustration, in boredom, in despair, in wonder or awe, in the craziest (or maybe the sanest) moment of your life you put all the stuff aside and turn toward yourself. And it's then that you ask, what is the meaning of existence?

My son wanted to know - did I ever wonder, did I ever ask.
Slowly I replied, "Yes, I have."



Photo: Corrie White - Liquid drop art: Mushroom and Jellyfish