Dearest Readers,
The tough times continue. We are still grappling with the pandemic. Climate change seems to be worsening. In Canada we are coming to grips with a genocide. Racism and general xenophobia are frighteningly widespread.
Despite a whole lot of good work being done to transform our world, the current situation can feel overwhelming. When the overwhelm hits hard and things feel utterly hopeless, apathy arises. ‘What’s the point?’ is a question I ask, and get asked, often.
Not everyone feels this kind of despair but I’m pretty sure all of us are looking for meaning. What, exactly, is the point of all of this?
Lately, when this deep question of ‘purpose’ comes up, I have been thinking of Oliver Šteins.
I interviewed Oliver for Communion in 2016 after he told me he was ‘a militant atheist and a very spiritual person’. He was adamant that human life did not have any great purpose but he was nevertheless excited by the profound mystery of the human journey:
“Live for the moment,” he says in the interview, “It’s much more exciting. What’s happening now. Concentrate on what’s happening now and enjoy it because tomorrow it could be all over, right?”
Oliver was diagnosed with ALS a couple of years after our conversation and he died in March of this year. The thoughts he shared during the interview now seem incredibly prescient. He talked about his death and how he wanted to ‘go’ and, despite his anti-religious feeling, he felt deeply connected to an Eternal Energy:
“Where did it all come from?” he asks. “How did this all come about?” Then he answers his own question: “I don’t know. But I’ll keep asking and that’s what keeps me motivated, that’s what keeps me interested in life.”
Oliver found his purpose by asking the Big Questions. He didn’t need certainty to feel that Life had meaning. It was the uncertainty that inspired him. (I am a recovering controller and I find this incredibly brave.)
There is a poignant moment in the interview when Oliver is talking about the awesome Ogilvie Mountains on the Yukon’s Dempster Highway:
“Seeing just how elated I was, how all-inspiring, the hope… that I was this little speck on this planet and amongst all this… there’s nobody around… the sun’s beaming and there’s a cloud moving in and the wind, and… I just felt very moved, very spiritual at that point. I had that connection.”
That connection. When I find myself in what’s-the-point territory I know it’s time to make That Connection. I need to look at the Big Picture and orient myself within it. I don’t necessarily need to know that Life has a Purpose but I need to find purpose for my own life.
Oliver then goes on to say, “I’m insignificant, I really am. I’m not depressed about it. I’m very elated.”
For Oliver, being an insignificant ‘little speck’ in the Universe gave him a feeling of elation. That Connection. Watching shows about the Cosmos and reading books about astrophysics and cosmology are elating for me, too. We are not separate from That Vastness. The reason we feel that connection is because we are Inextricably Connected to Everything.
Oliver resisted the idea that God was a being but he embraced Being with passion and determination. Without knowing he would be dead in five years, he says, “When the time comes of my passing… I wanna go [back to those mountains]. That would be my final stop. Get in a lawn chair and just look over that. I would like to exit that way.”
Oliver died in Cobourg, Ontario. He didn’t get to set up that lawn chair on the Dempster Highway. But, amazingly, wondrously, purposefully, and very much with-a-point, his life is continuing to speak:
“Concentrate on what’s happening now and enjoy it because tomorrow it could be all over, right?”
From the fires of love,
Celia
(Watch the 10-minute Communion episode with Oliver on YouTube.)
