Five gold rings

On the fifth day of Christmas, the time just got away.
Instead of deep reflection it was dash and rush and pay.
But, with a bit of effort and help from all around
we made it back quite safely where peace and love abound.

Let's pick up on the theme we started on the Third Day of Christmas, meaning? The question we asked then is an important one, much more important than we like to think: what gives meaning to our lives? This is not a trivial question, regardless of how simply it is phrased. The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) wrote once that knowing why one lived allowed on to endure almost any how. This rather simply stated insight led the Austrian psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Viktor Frankl (1905-1997), a survivor of the Nazi death camps, to use this as the basis for his highly successful logotherapy.

Meaning matters. What Nietzsche intuited, Frankl experience, and this under the extremist of circumstances. Meaning made the difference in untold number of instances between life and death, and while it may not be as existentially stark now as it was in Frankl's life, the rules of the life game haven't changed that much. So, the question that springs to my mind is how many of us have actually sat down and thought seriously about what gives meaning to our lives. If you never had, it's long overdue. If you have, is it the same as it once was? And keeping in tune with the Spirit of the Season, it is precisely this time of year ... the time between the years as it is ... that we should find a few quiet moments to reflect on just that. What gives meaning to our lives?

This isn't about New Year's resolutions that we never keep. Why should we? We make them because we think they'll help us become a better or healthier or happier person, but do we really know that that means? Of course we don't keep them because they are little more than add-on rules that simply get in the way, another set of obligations that are imposed upon much like the perceived unreasonable demands we get from our bosses or spouses or children or ... . Yes, I believe that most of us are so wrapped up in the details of our lives that we are not as clear on what is meaningful in our lives as we should be.

Meaning's a big deal. It's the answer to the "why" question. And "why" is always a big deal. So, do we work to live or do we live to work? Do we live for our children or merely through them? Do we live for the things that we have and own? Do we live for what we learn? It should be clear that I'm not asking why we get up and go to work everyday (or not, if we don't have a job), I'm asking if you know why you are even alive to begin with? It's a much more serious question.

The answer to that question is the gold – not brass – ring on the carousel of life.