I wanted to believe that this might be the only blog in town this week not about Osama or Obama. That I wouldn’t write a tome about “to kill a killer” or “to gloat or not to gloat.” Yet, in the end, it’s all really about the meaning of life, anyway. I’m talking about BIG stuff, here. I’m talking about THE POINT.

What’s the point?

And I’m not coming from that nihilistic, black nail polish kind of place. I’m coming from that stare into the mirror and sigh sort of place.

It seems like back “in the really old days” people had basic survival to contend with more than anything. Hunt, gather, and/ or grow food and do ones best to protect the family from marauders and generally bad people. Also likely was the added concern with the fate of one’s body, mind and spirit in the assumed or hotly debated afterlife.

Today, we’re still concerned with the procurement of food ( I mean, who doesn’t like a cold Coca Cola) and self-protection (could I ever build a wall high enough), however these basic needs are often overshadowed by the pursuit of new technology (patiently, peacefully waiting for the IPhone 5), preparing for retirement (what does that really mean in this day and age) and where and when we will take our next vacation (when did we need a fancy term for staying home instead of going somewhere else).

Back in the day when folks were primarily concerned with the survival of self and soul, do you think they felt an overarching sense of meaning in their lives? Do you think they felt connected to the rest of the planet; a kinship with other humans? Even without CNN? Makes me wonder…

When faced with my survival, is there really significant emotional and physical space to worry about the existential nature of meaning and purpose?

Today there are surely billions of people who are still concerned with their souls in the afterlife and who derive a sense of meaning from their respective religions or beliefs. Yet, I am unsure as to whether there is a unifying, universally coherent, common purpose for us all; something that draws us all together. Was the notion of the Tower of Babel (one of my favorite parables) merely about language or was there a deeper, existential notion of DIFFERENCE?

One would think the condition of our environment would have accomplished a unification for our species long ago yet the fact that the nations of the world can’t seem to work together to solve global warming is an indication of our state of affairs. We still remain scattered across the earth doing our own thing. Some countries still consider global warming an Other issue as a matter of public policy.

Then there is, of course, the issue of doctrine, dogma and subjective truth. The marauders attacking my village thousands of years ago believed they were justified in attacking my village even though I strongly disagreed. I mean, I REALLY disagreed with the essential premise of their approach to life.

Many of us today are in favor of free speech and democratic process until someone threatens us for real. When marauders come rolling through my sense of peace and calm, I want to stop them by any means necessary because I’m still basically a human being who doesn’t care about you until you make changing me and altering my agenda, your agenda. Then we have a problem, man.

The notion of that primordial tower was for all the nations of the earth to band together for a common end and build a structure so amazing that we could reach God, thus becoming Gods. However, that scoundrel God “confounded the language of all the Earth.” (Genesis 11:5-8) and set us back a ways. Now look at us.

A very long time ago (thankfully) I found myself to be very stuck. To qualify, whether I was in fact stuck or not wasn’t so much the issue as much as the almost unbearable feeling of being stuck. Some call it depression, others angst. Existentialists and French people simply call it life.

As an American man in my early twenties, I felt a great deal of resentment surrounding a perceived cultural expectation to not only go out and build something solid in the world that makes a lot of money, but to be happy at the same time. I felt burdened by it all. Yes, I attended a great American university and got good grades. I even attended arguably the most prestigious graduate school in our nation afterwards with even better grades. However, it wasn’t before long that I found myself swimming in a sea of despair.

I was at that point of awareness that I believed I had the ability to do something great in the world but felt utterly clueless as to what that looked like or where to begin. I remembered my chosen High School yearbook quote with disdain: “The road to anywhere begins with where you are.” As a seventeen year old, this notion had felt hopeful and bold; as a young man with a Masters from Harvard teaming with strength, virility and visions, it felt a mockery.

I experienced a confusing paradox: While I felt melancholic and defeated, I also felt passionate and creative about ideas and beliefs. I was conscious for the first sustained period of my life of a personal relationship to my Source. As Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard put it: “Faith is a miracle, and yet no man is excluded from it; for that in which all life is unified is passion, and faith is a passion.” I truly felt that passion for life, however I felt paralyzed when it came to bridging the creative, spiritual impulses with actually doing something.

After a series of terrible challenges and general upheaval in my little world, I took leave of my non-lucrative position making bagels in suburbia, grabbed my tent and my dog and headed for the desert. I decided I needed another “vision quest.” However, in hindsight, this label at least that time, was a cover up for a desperate Hail Mary shot towards the end zone. I was at wits end and had no idea what else to do. I parked myself in the middle of the Mojave Desert where I had previously had positive experiences.

Not this time. I sat in my tent beneath the scorching sun and cried. I hiked atop the tallest mountains in sight with my dog and my walking stick as if getting as high up as possible to some imagined heaven would provide better acoustics when I pleaded my case for guidance. I sat and I sat. After six days, I felt more empty, hungry and miserable than I had been when I first arrived.

I didn’t hear a loud voice from above with clarity and grace directing me to some wonderful terrestrial assignment.

What I heard was a still, small voice from within me that said: “Stop hurting yourself. You do not have to suffer.” At the time, the awareness that I could leave the barrenness of the desert was a non-event. Ho-hum. I already felt like a spiritual “failure” not having been given the command from God Central to do great things. So, the notion that I could just pack up my sleeping bag and head home seemed fairly miserable in the grand scheme of things.

However, I would say there have been few more important lessons in my life. The understanding that I choose my suffering like I choose my coffee in the morning is as profound as they come. The consideration that I do not have to suffer in order to create change or forward movement in my life is monumental.

Not knowing what I want or can do to make a difference in the world is one thing. Knowing that I don’t have to beat myself up for that lack of clarity is another. The compassion around choosing to love myself along the journey (even when it feels like an impossibility that this could actually be my journey) is one of the deepest truths I have learned.

I hope it helps you on your journey.

My dog, Chaco, turns 15 years old next week. I know there is a popular notion that dog years are actually measured in multiples of human years so that relatively speaking, 15 is akin to a Methusaleh experience. Personally, 15 is a long enough time as it is; I don’t need to multiply him by anything in order to appreciate how much I love him.

15 years ago, I was a 25 year old man with a Masters from Harvard and not a pot to piss in. No, really, I lived in a 9 ft. trailer in the middle of the New Mexican desert. I had no electricity, no heat and well, no toilet. Studying with shamans has historically never been a cake walk so I didn’t expect much regarding accommodations.

As the warmer breezes of spring rolled through the valley I drove to the local post office of the nearest town to send a letter ( remember the post office? ). There was a big red pick-up truck in the parking lot with big, fluffy, yapping, yellow puppies in the bed. The owner explained that “their bitch had been knocked up again by that damned Shepherd” and they simply couldn’t afford to feed the puppies anymore. The next step was death by drowning. Drowning?!?

It is said that we choose our relationships and our teachers choose us. The little, scrawny runt sat trembling at the back of the truck and peed a good sized puddle the second I looked at him. “I’ll take the little pisser, please.”

Chaco was not named for his chocolate dark complexion as many have assumed through the years. He was named for Chaco Canyon, the center of the turquoise trade in the Americas one thousand years ago and the namesake of the ancestors that would become today’s Navajo Nation.

He was afraid of his own shadow. He cried for weeks and screamed bloody murder every time I tried to pick his little body up and cradle him in my arms. Folks were convinced I was beating him due to the terrible noises he evoked on a regular basis. It took six months for a vet to realize he had a urinary tract infection that was beyond infected.

Chaco has now spent the better part of fifteen tremendous years with me and as an old timer with a fairly relaxed urethra, he has taken up peeing freely again. Living in a home with an incontinent canine has its challenges, especially now that we live upstairs in a brick building in one of the largest cities in the country. At the same time, there is something very familiar about the dynamic I am experiencing with my dear old dog.

The impulse to get irritated, frustrated and resentful each time the floor is wet or another rug is sent to be laundered is a mindful reminder about what it means to commit to another being. Maybe I chose the peeing runt who trembled at the back of the truck because I like challenges. Maybe, I figured he was the least likely to get adopted before being tossed into the river. Then again, maybe, just maybe, Chaco chose me because I had some things to learn and he was just the one to teach me.