How Love Brings Meaning to Life

Love Brings Meaning to Life

One of the greatest American psychologists, William James (1842-1910), once described his remarkable experience of inhaling nitrous oxide, or laughing gas. It aroused in him “the strongest emotion,” evoking a deep sense that he had glimpsed the meaning of life. Each time he was under the influence of the drug, he experienced an epiphany, but as soon as its effects wore off, he was unable to capture it in words.

The eminent physician Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894) offered a similar account of his experience while under the influence of another powerful inhalation anesthetic, ether, except that Holmes once managed to write down the meaning of life as it appeared to him. When he came fully to his senses, he was disappointed to read the “all-embracing truth” he had recorded in rather straggling and ill-shaped characters: “A strong smell of turpentine prevails throughout.”

As these accounts by two notable minds of the 19th century indicate, the meaning of life can prove rather mercurial. Despite our best efforts, it can elude us for years, and then finally, just when we think we have it firmly in our grasp, slip away. Such disappointments might be taken as an indication that our methods are faulty, or that we lack the intellectual or spiritual equipment necessary to attain such a vision, or perhaps even that there is no such thing as “the meaning of life.”

But the mere fact that something is difficult to attain does not render its pursuit pointless. After all, physical fitness and personal trust both require intense and sustained effort. And even if life’s meaning does turn out to elude us in the end, its pursuit might still offer benefits that make the quest more than worthwhile. Numerous poets and philosophers over the years have suggested that immersing ourselves in the journey may be more important than reaching the destination.

Socrates (470-399 BC), who is sometimes regarded as the first great Western philosopher, resisted the idea that he should be numbered among the sophists, teachers of rhetoric in his day who claimed to be wise and required payment from their students. He claimed that only an idiot or a charlatan would charge money for something that cannot be bought or sold, and that instead of possessing wisdom, he was a philosopher, one who loved and pursued it.

Socrates’ foremost biographer, if he had one, was Plato (428-348 BC), and one of Plato’s most famous dialogues is the Symposium, a drinking party in which some of the most interesting people in ancient Athens gather to offer speeches in praise of what they regard as life’s meaning, love. Socrates argues that love at its best is the longing for something beyond and above ourselves, the pursuit of which can bring out the best in us.

A similar idea is found in another foundational text of Western civilization, the Gospel of John. It is the only one of the four gospels in which Jesus (4 BC- 30 AD) issues a new commandment, and unlike many of the Ten Commandments, which include “Do not murder,” “Do not commit adultery,” and “Do not steal,” it is not a demand to refrain from a prohibited pattern of conduct. Instead Jesus enjoins his followers to “Love one another, as I have loved 

For both Socrates and Jesus, it seems, if life has some overarching meaning, it is bound up with love, and if we love at our best, our lives take on as much meaning as they possibly can. For both, the meaning of life is not a mere proposition, something that could be written down on a chalkboard, but a way of life, which cannot be understood once and for all but must be brought to life and lived out every day of our lives.