Does Life Make Sense?

“If only it were so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.”

― Greg Lukianoff, "The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure"

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Dear Kate,

"Victims of anti-South Asian racism at Surrey park not obliged to accept apology, says UBC prof," thus says a headline, one that has stayed ahead in our local news for a couple of days now.

Do you find this headline interesting?  I do.

Can you remember the last time someone, a person in a position of authority, instructing you how to--actually much more--whether to, accept an apology?

Probably your parents, right?  And where?  In a playground?  Around a dinner table?  Holding your hand in one and your sibling's another?

Or maybe some religious figure, just like our parents, whose authority has no "scientific" basis, is not a "professional" in the matter, not "certified" to know what is true enough to begin to speak about it, let alone instructing others on it.

What "qualifies" a parent, a priest, an elder to be a proprietor of truth, my truth?  Who asks them to be our moral police?

Interestingly, then, how the headline suggests a university professor's instruction on this matter carries a peculiar weight, heavy enough to stay afloat front and center for two days.

And what did the professor actually say?  A moral question that a conflicted child in a playground would struggle with, without having (or needing) the linguistic wherewithal to frame the question so elegantly.

So the adult question, then, must be, Why?  Why do we need to enlist the professional opinion of certified expert to be educated, enlightened on a matter so ordinary, so very much within the normal expectation of our everyday human experience?  We are not talking about building a bridge, or flying to the moon.  Do you not know how to ask yourself whether you should forgive?

Why?  The question of all questions--not What, not Where, not even How.  At the end, all our questionings are part of our human quest to make sense of life.  We could have all the resources to make life flourish (as we do in this part of the world), but if there is ultimately not a reason for it to, living is no more than setting things on fire along our path, seeing what would burn bright for a day or two for it to worth its while, letting most others of our smoldering dreams dying into embers, ourselves into ashes.

Does life make sense?  Does it?  To you?

Another headline, phrased the same way in summoning the power of those who know better: "Political violence related to COVID-19 could lead to 'unravelling of societies' worldwide, observers say."

"Observers."  Well, you are an observer.  I am an observer.  You and I both did observe what the "observers" observed.  So Why?  Why the violence?  Why its escalating?  Why related to COVID?  Why the unravelling?

Theses are your questions.  These are my questions.  We are not in a playground any more.  Mommy might have known best, but now, with societies disintegrating, "unravelling," we will need to know even better.

In my last letter, I suggested the Bible makes sense because it makes sense of life, our life.  Right from the get-go it debunks the untruth of Us vs. Them, a lie that we couldn't quite untell ourselves, about how life is a battle between good people and evil people.

If we would only listen.  But no, we want expert opinions, conclusions tried, proven and true in the laboratory of human inferno.  We've gone through great wars.  We said we will never do them again.  Yet we are living like we want further proofs of what we should already know by now.

We are still not listening, rebellious Adams.

Yours, Alex