Without love your life will pass in a flash
What is the meaning? what is the direction that keeps you from drifting in the currents of proximity?
Viktor Frankl frames the issue in an interesting way. In his excellent 'Man's Search for Meaning', he reverses the question; given the uniqueness of each individual that question is like asking a chess master what is the best move in the world. Ridiculous. Each situation, each individual must answer for the circumstance at hand. Instead he offers,
Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is *he *who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.
So, how is responsibility actually implemented? Frankl continues,
This emphasis on responsibleness is reflected in the categorical imperative (of Logotherapy), which is: Live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now!.....The only really transitory aspects of life are the potentialities...having been is the surest form of meaning.
This maxim is reminiscent of the Jewish framing of sin - not so much an evil deed as a missed opportunity. In contrast to more traditional notions in which sin is an explicit action or transgression, ultimately relying on a heavenly judiciary to assign punishment, Judaism offers the inverse: sin is the absence of a positive behavior. The issue is magnified by the simple truth that the opportunity will never again present itself. That* opportunity* is therefore encoded into the past, that decision forever destined to live as a scar - or perhaps a silence (absence of an impact) - upon history. Such a concept of sin is infinitely greater in it's potency and ability to correct behavior than an abstract fear-based model (i.e., heaven, hell and all that). One is given full responsibility to make the world a better place. Therefore the transgression affects the universe, amplifying punishment - ripples in a pond. In short, sin affects one's legacy. The key take away is that sin is shot down from the level of abstraction and grounded in the context of this world.
Can there exist a concept more powerful than that we have in these small bodies the agency, indeed the responsibility, to bend the future of the universe according to our activities?