More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
“We are meaning-seeking creatures,” I wrote, “who must deal with the inconvenience of being hurled into a universe that intrinsically has no meaning.” And then to avoid nihilism, I explained, we must embark on a double task. First, we invent or discover a life-meaning project sturdy enough to support a life. Next, we must contrive to forget our act of invention and persuade ourselves that we have not invented but discovered the life-meaning project—that it has an independent “out there” existence.
In her final paragraph she reminded him that the lungs in the human fetus do not breathe, nor do its eyes see. Thus, the embryo is being prepared for an existence it cannot yet imagine. “Are we not, too,” Paula suggested to her
son, “being prepared for an existence beyond our ken, beyond even our dreams?”
They had learned one lesson particularly well: that life cannot be postponed; it must be lived now, not suspended until the weekend, until vacation, until the children leave for college, until the diminished years of retirement.
