Haunting Questions

If you are an athe­ist, your haunt­ing ques­tion is “why?” If you are a the­ist, your haunt­ing ques­tion is “how?” It is really very sim­ple. If you think all of this is just a series of ran­dom acci­dents, you will have trou­ble find­ing mean­ing. It is too easy to reduce life to being an advanced ani­mal with no par­tic­u­lar pur­pose. If you believe that there is a Divine per­son­al­ity behind the uni­verse, you will be con­cerned about how to live and how to relate to that Being — what­ever It may be.

I pre­fer “how” to “why” for a num­ber of rea­sons. I guess I need to feel like life has some sort of ulti­mate pur­pose. Then again, the chance of this being just a series of cos­mic acci­dents is more than remote. I would rather be haunted by “how” than “why.” Life is an art. If I thought that life was only an acci­dent, I would be less patient about it and really not have any real rea­son to con­tinue this thing called “life.” It is just too hard to find mean­ing in a series of accidents.

We are too com­plex and the planet is too well suited to us for this to be ran­dom. Also, I am a per­son of style. “How” is cool. “Why” is sopho­moric. I have an eye for the arts and a healthy sus­pi­cion that I am being observed by some per­fect Being. I even have the ego to think that the Being involved cares what hap­pens to lit­tle old me.

If you have set­tled the “why” then the “how” is not such a big deal. Any­thing this grand and cre­ative would have to be lov­ing and for­giv­ing. Appar­ently life is some sort of gift. Mean­ing is not hard to find if you are an opti­mist — if you trust Life for what it seems to be in all of its appar­ently bizarre forms.

One ques­tion leads you through life with a frown — the other with a smile. I am haunted by “how” as if com­ing to know a mys­te­ri­ous Friend.