When I was in my sophomore year of college, my depression was continually getting worse and worse- medication wasn't helping (talk to me later about the trial and error process of finding the right medication...) and counseling didn't seem to be doing much good. One Wednesday night after the Celebrate! service at the chapel was over, I sat in the second pew from the front on the right hand side, curled up with my knees to my chest and stared at the Christus Rex figure. I wanted to be mad at God, but all I could do was stare blankly.
I don't know how long I sat there. The chapel was dark; silence reigned; no one else was in the building. And then a noise broke the silence- the pastor, coming up from his basement office under the chancel. I willed him to move on. He didn't.
He came and sat next to me, just sat and stared at the Christ figure with me for a while. Eventually he asked what was on my mind, and all my depressed existential musings spilled out. I asked him what the point of life was; why should I continue fighting so hard, when my quality of life was still so low? I don't remember his answer.
But that was a question I continued asking, for a long time: What's the point? Why should I keep going? Is there even a purpose to all this...life stuff?
I never got a satisfying answer.
And it wasn't until a few days ago that I finally figured out why there had never been an answer that satisfied me... I've always thought that I needed to do something to justify my existence, that I needed to do some awesome thing in my life in order to give it all meaning: Cure cancer, catch murderers, become president, save children from a burning building. Think how selfish and conceited that is- it's all about my life, how great it needs to be, how I have so much potential and skills and talents that the world could benefit from.
The problem was that I'd been viewing my life as a given, as something I was entitled to; therefore I felt the need to do something great with it to make it mean something.
Instead I need to view my life as a privilege, to recognize all the advantages and luxuries I've been afforded in my life, the things I've been given by luck of the draw (being born in America, being born white, being born middle class) and then use those things to live for other people. To help them in ways that they can't.
It's not what I will accomplish that will give my life purpose, but rather that my life's purpose should be others.
How have I missed that for so long?
Ok, what do I do now with this new revelation? It's one thing to recognize that I need to live for other people, and it's another to actually do it. How does one go about doing such a thing? I'm not really sure, but I'm going to start trying.
Maybe in another 20 years I'll figure it out.
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