Inner Richness

I find it quite interesting to reflect on the question, what makes life rich? What gives meaning to it? Many years ago, I read a book by Henri Barbusse called L'Enfer in which he describes a solitary narrator's journey into this struggle for meaning as he looks at various people through a peephole in his tiny room. The character literally becomes a "voyeur", later concluding that even when people feel insignificant to the immense universe, they still find meaning insofar as they are thinking and framing beings. Barbusse invokes Kant as a kind of "savior" in this book, because it is Kant who suggests that meaning is evoked in the way humans frame the world through their capacities of intellect and synthetic reason.
   Tonight I do reflect that meaning is not a pre-given, but it is something that is fostered through certain kinds of communities. Reading, to give one example, is hardly a solitary act. It involves locking into a particular series of discourses or frameworks that scholars and others work together to build and develop. At the same time, however, it's up to the individual to tap into that sense of meaning by turning inward to see if it makes sense. This "making" sense is not easy to explain, but I think it has to do with shutting out a lot of the inner chatter in one's mind and really asking the question: how do I as a thinker connect with the information in front of me?
   If a person is continually driven from one task to another (as often the case in today's rushed society), it's hard to find time to check in with oneself to find out how they are structuring, ordering and making sense out of the activities they engage in. Yet, it's the way that people frame their stories that seems to make them somewhat meaningful. A life that lacks the narrative substance might start to lose that appeal: it becomes a life of looking out rather than turning within. I think that even when people leave formal education, they need that ability to turn their experiences into meaningful, thoughtful and deep narratives. Perhaps blogging is one way to do so, but even personal reflection in silence can also work in a similar way to foster a richness of meaning.