The Meaning of Life

Every few months, I - and, I suspect, many others - wonder what, precisely, it is that I'm making out of my life. What it is that I really want to do. Do I want to spend the rest of my life devoted to the largely insular world of academia? Not particularly. Devoted to my students? That I could do.

It brings back, again and again, the recognition that I do what I do because of the students. Not because of the texts, not because of Shakespeare, but because of the students. Because it allows me to teach them how to think critically, not about the texts, but about the world. About what they are told - even by me. I simply use literature as the medium.

But my secret heart - well, perhaps not so secret - wants desperately to create that medium. To create something that will do by itself what I struggle to teach. To change not the world, but minds. Because, ultimately, it is the changing of minds that will change the world.

And the thing to which I come back, every time, is the idea that there is no binary. There can be no binary in a world made of color and light and sound and touch. And that those who live with binaries ultimately condemn themselves to exactly that which they hate and fear.

This is not a new point. I do not claim it is. However, it is one that needs revisitation. There are thousands, perhaps millions, of people who do not recognize the hypocrisy inherent in themselves, in their religion, and in the ideologies they purport. I hope, someday, to see a majority of rational, thoughtful people who are able to place their faith in their own logic rather than in something external to themselves. Whether they want to call that part of themselves god or reason is unimportant, but until we as a species stop attributing right and wrong based on illogical and hallucinatory fairy tales, we will not be able to work as a cohesive species.