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A Question of Meaning
Paul Amadeus Provencher

"I must give myself meaning," he told me over coffee one afternoon. We had not seen each other since the last days of high school, having gone our separate ways without a backward glance, young in the face of the world, knowing it was ours. I sought the truth in the abstract, thinking to unlock the mysteries of God with my own intellect. He went to travel, to explore the paths of the world and follow the river Ocean wherever it may have led him. Failure drew us home.

Life had a meaning, I knew, and I knew that there was something I would have to do with this knowledge. Discerning this was a challenge, and I had almost discovered it by the time we ran into each other in the old part of town. I did not know that he too had returned. Plans came unraveled in his life, he told me, and his band broke up, leaving him with nothing to do; he lived for the guitar. Nothing was left for him but to return to the parents he had abandoned and seek to put his dreams back together. The ivory tower of his future had been destroyed by the storms of fortune.

My own plans for life failed. Having gone into the monastery with bright hopes of being the next Thomas I studied the highest things, but soon realized my lack of charity; I could not live with the brothers, and the Abbot counseled that I return to the world to examine my life and discern the will of God.

He did not believe in God. How could he? Having been liberated by the moderns, he needed no conception of the cosmos other than what his eyes could see and his ego could accept. Life was something he said he would try to get the most out of before he died, and no thought of what came after entered his head.

We met one bright afternoon in a small coffee house, not the loud sort that try to imitate a combination between the Paris cafes of the intellectual elite and a Harlem jazz club, but a place where they did not care who you were. One could sit as long as he liked outside the rush of the world. It was thus we met to discuss the frenzy and turmoil of the past several years. For him it started slowly, playing gigs around our home town, enjoying the appreciative audiences until one day a man approached his band with an offer that would aid in their attaining national acclaim. Hoping to make the most of their band they immediately agreed and began a whirlwind of tours and recording sessions. Often they lacked time to stop in the sundry cities they played, and would spend the nights between the seats of a van, sleeping on the floorboards, stretching out wherever there was room.

Drinking was his favorite pastime, although he somehow managed to maintain his literary interest. I never understood how he was able to do it. In high school he was able to write massive papers, and somehow had time to refresh his mind with Hawthorne before he refreshed his body with sleep. He saw places I will never go on his tours of the country, and he certainly paid no mind to anything that could have interfered with his chosen course in life. He smoked a clay pipe of distinct styling almost constantly, and his lyrics tended to refer back to Alice in Wonderland.

Above all, he paid no mind to what he was doing. He had no need. One must not examine his life if he is not taking it anywhere, he reasoned, and besides, he was comfortable with the way he lived. Days came and went, and he took them at face value, and did not plan for the future. The effulgence of his music was critically acclaimed to resemble the greatest guitarists of the sixties and seventies, and he adopted their views of the world.

I flew to my monastery high in the mountains like the bird in the psalms, and found refuge in the sweet scent of prayers, drank in the silence, and reveled in the daily revelation of truth that came to me in my reading. Writing was to be part of my vocation, I had decided, and I did my best to expose the things I had seen, and was congratulated for doing so. Although a novice, I was permitted to publish. After a time, though, I began to grow selfish of God, and thought I could horde Him unto myself, and my charity towards others lessened.

I remembered all this as I sat back in my chair, sipping the coffee, feeling the warmth fill me. We looked at each other.

"Ever since the band broke apart, I've been drifting," he said. "We had it made, but Will had to run off and become a Buddhist monk. We could have gotten somewhere. I don't have anything now. My parents have accepted me back into their home, and I think we are being reconciled, although we still cannot talk to each other. It just seems as though any purpose I had in my life is gone, my control is gone. I know that I can ordain the meaning of my life, but since the band has broken, I have not been able to do that anymore. I held dear that highest hope, and it was ripped from me."

"The monastery taught me that I do not love other men as I ought," I said. "That was to be my purpose, but I just seemed unable to do it. I saw the heights that few others have even dreamed of seeing, but I had not charity. She eluded me, or rather I did not reach out to her. Selfishness led to sloth, and soon I was enervated, and could not attain the perfection I sought."

We both knew that we had failed in our respective lives. He now played in dead-beat bars and coffee houses late at night, and I fed children at the local mission. I knew this could be a triumph for both of us, but I refused to acknowledge it. The high purposes we sought fled like the dawn, giving way to day that revealed more about ourselves than we wished to know.

"I can create a purpose for myself," he insisted, "one that will take me back to the heights. I know I can. I am whatever I make myself, and I can make myself great again." He trailed off in desperation. Our eyes met, and we knew that we could discuss this no further. I was learning humility, and he was being taught his own futility.

We agreed to meet early the next day; we would go to a museum, trying to understand the mystery of human creation, of the spark of the artist. I insisted we go to Mass before hand; he acceded.

Morning began with fire in the east and fingers of gold leaping across the sky, illumining the stained glass windows in the church. The old priest, bent with the years, said the offertory, and the Canon began. We knelt as he spoke the ancient words: "Hoc est enim corpus meum," and held the Lord aloft. I knew then what was my purpose; I could not contrive it, as my friend thought, but rather saw that I had to live for Him; only He could teach me the charity I lacked and ultimately could lead me to Bliss. I gazed upwards in thanksgiving, hoping that I could be content with my cross, my forced humility. We left the church, I knowing my role in life, my place in the universe, knowing in that moment what I had to do, while my friend's head bowed with the weight of his struggle, not realizing the only true purpose his life could have.