Grounds for Life

[Anxiety - VI]

Death causes anxiety.

There’s a pronounced anxiety when we look honestly at our mortality. On a daily basis, we run into the reality that our physical bodies break down. We fall apart. We degenerate. Life, as it were, is a slow process toward death. (Doesn’t that just sound depressing?)

But there’s another type of death that causes perhaps more anxiety: The death of meaning. We worry that this life—our life!—has no purpose, no meaning, no point.

By comparison, the death of meaning has a more profound grip on our wellbeing than physical death because purpose can be pursued, grasped, and fulfilled with very little physical ability. But our physical bodies cannot survive without purpose.

Meaning not only gives purpose to this life.
Meaning is the grounds for life.
Meaning is quite literally the air in our lungs and the blood in our veins.

Addressing anxiety takes immense courage because in the midst of embracing finitude, it necessarily involves the long, hard work of discovering meaning.