Living a Meaningful Life Without Purpose
by
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Even a wrong committed at the right time, the ancients taught -- at the right moment when the portal of Genesis is open for it to become manifest -- is considered “a beautiful happening in its appointed time.”43 I know. That’s taking it too far. But take a moment and think about it. Let’s say a man robs his wife of her life savings and invests it in a slot machine in Vegas and wins. So, although his actions are wrong, the moment is right, and he will return home with a wad full of Ben Franklins! How beautiful indeed! The beauty of it is that she will have more money than she ever dreamed of, and he will be able to afford the alimony. So, all is well. Okay. Maybe that was not the best analogy. Maybe what these ancient sages meant to say was that even if your choice is wrong, you can refurbish the moment. You can in the moment of your boo-boo turn things around by redirecting the wrongness of your action toward rightness. So, you come home and find the skateboard in the walkway to your house and you lose it and yell at the kids: “Who put the Goddam skateboard in the walkway?!” Instantly, in the moment, you realize the wrongness of hurting your children’s feelings over so trivial a phenomenon as having almost broken your leg, fractured your hip, herniated your discs and dislocated your shoulder, and so you quickly transform the moment by adding: “That is the cleverest thing I have ever seen! What a great idea!!! This way, I can get to the front door faster! Thank you!” See? At first, you did a bad thing, but the moment opened up for you right then to create a whole new scenario, to call forth the primordial Light of Genesis from out of the primordial Darkness of Nemesis. Nothing more beautiful than that. Every moment is then eternal in the sense that in that very moment we can begin anew, alter our fate, our destiny, with one swoop of a choice, of an in-the-moment decision. Interestingly, the word for “moment” in the ancient Hebrew language is exactly the same as the word for “invitation” – z’mahn. Every moment is an invitation waiting for your RSVP. Therefore, even though much of my life is out of my control, I can still focus on any given moment and make that moment special, sacred, larger-than-life, severing the experience of it from the ongoing saga of my life-problems. I can accept the invitation and attend, open to both its gifts and its challenges, remembering that flowers grow from dirt, and diamonds must be cut, and I’ve got to crack the shell to eat the nut, and that my plate of healthy veggies were made possible by a pile of manure.
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About the Book
To describe what this book is about would defeat its purpose since it is about living a meaningful life without purpose. “Purpose is overrated,” writes the author. “What is it your business what purpose God or intelligent design or Darwin had in mind when the idea of you came up? What makes you think that your right to life hangs on some kind of particular task and that you were specifically hired to perform it? And anyway, if you know why you are here, what would be the point in you being here, altogether? Basically, you are here for the purpose of not knowing why. So deal with it.” We are indeed living very much in a purpose-driven culture that has all but robbed us of the gift of meaning and replaced it with the urgency of purpose. As a result, more and more of us are judging one another not for who we are but for what we’ve accomplished and for what sort of justification we’ve come up with for existing. Thus, people rarely ask “So tell me about yourself.” Rather, it’s mostly “You got a card?” To paraphrase comedian Jackie Mason, “Everybody is handing out business cards, but the only ones making a living are the printers.” The search for purpose becomes more urgent when we feel we exist by no choice of our own because when things get rough, there better be sufficient justification for being here that makes going through this shit worthwhile. On the other hand, when we focus on meaning rather than on purpose, we liberate ourselves from the constraints of the have-tos and breathe in the pristine gift of the moment and of each phase in the magic of our life unfolding.
About the Author
Gershon Winkler has been described as everything from “a brazen trickster of folklore and a mischievous maverick” (Intermountain Jewish News, Denver) to “combining the wit of Robin Williams with the wisdom of the Baal Shem Tov” (The Jerusalem Post). The Los Angeles Times called him “a rarity,” while the Wall Street Journal in a front-page feature described him as a man who “travels an unusual path and ruffles feathers.” Noted by Four Corners Magazine for his “irrevent reverence,” the author has won the hearts and boggled the minds of many through his books, lectures and articles for well over 40 years. “Gershon grows corn,” writes David Carson, Choctaw Elder and co-author of the bestselling Medicine Cards. “He celebrates the wind. He is a friend of Spider, Magpie, and Lizard. He lives with storms, with the crash of lightning, with rainbows. He is a laughing Buddha and a Coyote Trickster.” Author of fifteen books, mostly on Jewish history, mystery, law and lore, Winkler has lectured and served as Scholar-in-Residence at colleges and universities, and for intercultural conferences and retreats across the U.S., Canada, Europe, Latin America and Israel. “His is a powerful voice that tells a credible story, and with a wonderful sense of humor,” writes Dr. Carl Hammerschlag, author of Theft of the Spirit and Dancing Healers. “With wit and wisdom,” says bestselling author and health guru Dr. Andrew Weil, “Gershon renders user-friendly the more cryptic teachings of ancient source texts and oral traditions in a way that inspires and informs our lives.”