Buttermere...

We’re all looking for meaning in our lives, with varying degrees of success. There’s a big difference, however, between ‘looking’ and ‘looking for’. When we look for our mislaid car-keys we are seeking a known quantity. Knowing what we’re looking for, we can immediately discount anything that isn’t key-shaped. We look for spiritual enlightenment too, and, if we search long enough and hard enough, we will probably come up with something that matches our expectations. It will, however, be in the realm of what we already know; we only know we’ve found something because we recognise it.

But when we are simply looking, we are not constrained by the need to find. Saying “I don’t know”, honestly and openly, frees us up to new experiences. I’m not looking for the right answers; I’ll happily settle, instead, for asking the right questions.

By the age of 25 most of us have assembled a portfolio of beliefs and opinions, which, if left unchallenged, will last us a lifetime. We develop political affiliations; we may come to identify with a particular religion (most likely the one we grew up with) or reject religion altogether. Once our beliefs, opinions and, yes, prejudices, are firmly in place, we have the intellectual wherewithal to meet every new situation with an appropriate response. We know where we stand on the pressing issues of the day, which cuts out a good deal of thinking and soul-searching.

We may be ‘good people’, regular church-goers and well-regarded members of society, but at some point in our lives most of us stop looking and listening. We develop a coherent and consistent view of the world, and our place in it, precisely so that we don’t need to ‘waste’ time and effort in looking afresh. Our beliefs are the only ones worth having, our opinions are those held by “all right-thinking people”. We make sense of our lives, and our increasingly blinkered view, by being 'right'. Questioning our beliefs and opinions might make us doubt everything we hold dear... and then where would we be?

Whatever bolsters these opinions is gathered up; whatever challenges them is cast aside. We buy the newspaper that promotes our beliefs, opinions and prejudices; we choose our friends based on how closely their views coincide with ours. Our equilibrium is threatened by those who choose to live their lives in a different way. We don’t want to discover anything new; we just want the opinions we have already to be confirmed.

At moments of doubt, we default to what we already know. We collude in the process of making ourselves more unhappy today than we were yesterday. The pattern is set. We become old... in attitude, if not in years. We stop looking; we stop listening; in the game of life, we’re just ‘playing out time’.