You'll notice I didn't ask questions directly relating to religion. I suspected a lot of the questions would inspire spiritual discussions, and decided to broach the subjects that way. You may also notice that none of the tweets have any typical Twitter slang—no abbreviations or emoticons. For the sake of reading ease, I corrected misspellings and omitted excessive punctuation. Lastly, you may wonder why I didn't start each section with a TinyBuddha.com quote, as I do on the site. The simple reason is that I wanted this book to explore our collective understandings, which often parallel many of those same ideas.
I want you to read this knowing that you are not alone. Whatever question you're asking yourself right now, someone else somewhere else—but probably a lot closer than you think—is wondering the very same thing. If you search Twitter for emotional words like happy or frustrated—as I tend to do when coming up with blog topics—you'll find a seemingly infinite number of similar thoughts, feelings, problems, observations, and conclusions.
The questions are what unite us. It's up to me, and it's up to you, to identify and use the answers that empower each of us as individuals.
What's the Meaning of Life?
It's perhaps the oldest and most frequently asked question in the world: why are we all here? The persistent need to make sense of life, to gain some semblance of control in an otherwise uncertain world, is one of the few things that unites us all. No matter how much we gain or how much we learn, there's no escaping the reality that nothing is permanent and a lot is unknowable.
To temper our uneasiness about what we might lose, how we might hurt, and how desperately we want to believe there's some reason for it all, we cling to ideas of what it all might mean—what the events of our lives mean about the grand picture, what our accomplishments mean about us, what we mean to the people we meet, and what our lives mean in the context of history. We can never know for sure what life itself means, but we can know that we mean something in a potentially meaningless world. When we realize that our actions might be our only hope at living a meaningful life, it's easy to feel paralyzed. After all, purpose is something deliberate, something grand, something beautiful—something people would want to talk about. Meaning can be a high-pressure situation if we don't trust ourselves to identify it and then live in accordance with it.
At twenty-four years old, I'd officially set up shop in Manhattan, where I planned to become a Broadway star. I was rarely sure I liked myself, but I was certain I loved myself when I gutted myself onstage and filled the hole with a fictional character. Also: everyone else knew that I came to New York to become someone. I felt desperate to succeed on a massive scale—to take that small bit of joy I felt while in a costume and pump it into an aura of greatness that everyone could see, admire, and respect.
Going to New York was easy; doing something when I got there, not so much. If I pursued my purpose and failed, I'd have to acknowledge that I wasn't good enough to do what I was meant to do, and worse yet, I'd confirm what I assumed to be my family members' suspicions: that I was inadequate and a horrible disappointment. You could have watched me from afar for a lifetime and never have known it, but you'd have been certain if you looked into my eyes for even a second: for the vast majority of my life, I believed the words Lori Deschene meant "worthless." In fear of confirming this under a magnifying spotlight, I tucked myself into a hole of a home the moment I got to New York. If I chose to sit on the sidelines, I figured, I wasn't choosing not to try; I was just waiting for the right time.
I worked for four hours a day as a telemarketer and lived in a week to-week single-room-occupancy building, somewhat like a dorm for crackheads, prostitutes, and little girls lost. On most afternoons, after work, I filled a small rolling suitcase with the necessities I didn't want stolen if someone ransacked my place for drug money and then made the trek to the Times Square Internet Café. After finding a relatively odorless spot to camp out through the evening, I'd dive into Craigslist, hoping to emerge at the surface of reality with some answer as to what I should do and who I should be. I looked for jobs; I searched for roommate situations; I browsed the event section to fantasize about hobbies I might take up; I even frequented the platonic personals section for friendships. Although I made a few peripheral connections, I knew I wasn't going to really open myself up to new people and experiences. It was like I was creating a vision board for a life I had no intention of realizing in the foreseeable future. I was pretty much just going through the motions. I was "trying" to fill my life, while secretly feeling opposed to the risk it would involve.
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