The last time we reflected on trust, trust in ourselves and in the process of life unfolding within ourselves. It is also trust in the meaningfulness of life, and essentially of the unfolding universe. A key factor here is meaning. I think that there are two components of meaning: a sense of worth and a sense of purpose.
We wrote that trust in self requires both awareness of our deepest, inmost self and a conviction of the worth, value, sacredness, of that self. As we said, this is a gradual, never ending process, and it involves a struggle. Our limitations, mistakes, and even wrongdoing can drag us down and make us feel no good or worthless. A first step here is to become aware of how we talk down to ourselves. Then we may try to not to engage with or accept as true this negative self-talk. I like to say that we should never talk to ourselves other than we would talk to a hurt or angry child on our best day.
Sharon Salzberg, meditation instructor, says of such negative thoughts and feelings that we should see them as visitors, but not give them the run of the house. We have all the human feelings, even the most frightening ones, but that we do not have to act on them.
We are all limited, or as philosopher, Sam Keen, put it, we are all flawed human beings. Yet our sacredness is compatible with and even part of our flawed nature. Henri Nouwen speaks of the wounded healer. Woundedness is part of the human condition, but sacredness remains and we can still heal one another. Out of her suffering andn poverty Rapunsel is able to restore sight to her husband. Our own wounds, if borne creatively, can be a source of vision and healing for one another.
It is fascinating that in Greek mythology, the wisest persons, those who see most clearly and deeply, such as Tiresias the seer, and later, Oedipus, are blind, as is Shakespeare’s king Lear. Our creativity, wisdom, and love seem to emerge in some degree from the suffering that is part of the human condition
Al this is to say that we are each a being of sacred worth. What is deepest within us, discovered gradually, with struggle, and with the help of others, and over time, is our own underlying sacred worth. And since we are a being in process, a being whose life unfolds over time, the process in becoming who we are is also meaningful and, as we have said, trustworthy.
The other component of meaning is purpose, a “why” of our existence. We may think of our self as gradually coming into the hands of our awareness and decision, and coming into our hands as something of worth. This process can be described as the gathering of self into our hands. The next step is to place that self, to give that sacred self to something worthwhile.
The word “purpose,” in its Latin roots, means placed before, something in front of us that we can reach for. It is something to which we can give ourselves. It is what we can live for. The opposite is to be empty-handed, to have nothing in front of us to reach for, nothing to give ourselves to, nothing to live for. This is the opposite of trust and hope; it is despair.
There is a line in the poem by Robert Frost that expresses this experience. In Death of a Hired Man, Frost tells the story of the old man, Silas, who had a particular skill in bundlng hay, but was estranged from his family and unreliable in coming to work. He is described as having “nothing to look backward to with pride, and nothing to look forward to with hope.” His working days are over and “he has come home to die,” to the only place that even remotely has seemed at home to him at least in recent years. The wife of the couple who had hired him describes home as: “the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.”
The poem suggests the experience of purpose as having something to which we can give ourselves and our life.
In the plays bearing his name, Oedipus passes from ignorance to awareness, from cleverness to wisdom, a path that is transformed by through suffering. In his final play, Oedipus at Colonus, the 90 year old Sophocles portrays the death of Oedipus. He says farewell to his daughters with these words.”Yet one little word can change all pain. That word is LOVE, and love you’ve had from me more than any man can ever give.” His final wisdom is that the meaning of life is love.
Viktor Frankl echoes a similar theme. “I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth–that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which a person can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of humans is through love and in love.”
We have referred previously to Albert Einstein’s conviction that love is the most powerful, yet unseen, force in the universe. Such love energy explains everything. It is at once essential to our survival and gives meaning to life.
Once again the meaning of life is portrayed in terms of love, not in a narrow romantic sense, but as the gift of one’s whole self from the heart to something beyond the self, whether a person, a value, a life story, a cause. To be able to do so, a person must have a healthy and mature acceptance of self, a recognition of self as a being of worth, as a sacred self. In other words, in order to give oneself a person must have a sense that they have something to give, that they are a someone worth giving.
Once again we return to the understanding meaning as the gathering and gift of self, as a sense of worth and purpose.
May you come more and more to recognize your own intrinsic worth, to experience yourself as a sacred self. And may the sense that you have something to give and are and a someone worth giving. And may you find what or who is worth the gift of your whole self.
Norman King, September 21, 2025
