What is the Point?

I am back in school, freshly enrolled in the University of Phoenix in pursuit of a Bachelor’s Degree in Information Technology—Visual Communications. I do not have a great deal of time outside of work to devote to this, so I was naturally put out when the site went down in the middle of a post. Not just any post, but a post in which I found myself inspired to posit a somewhat challenging question.

Of course that post is now forever lost, inspiring this wonderful missive. When you strive to do not only what is required of you, when you strive to do more than is expected of you and stumble into a thought or question that has real potential, only to have that effort vanish without a trace, does it not make you wonder if there is any point?

I hesitate to answer. I know that it is frustrating, with excessively descriptive adjectives on top. I do not think of it as an entirely wasted effort, since I gained some benefit from having gone through the process of finding and asking the question. On the other hand, I did not get to make my point. When I think of all the things that I might say that might prove meaningful or enlightening to someone else, when I think of the point I am always trying to make even when the words fail me, I have to wonder if that point has any significance for anyone but me.

I used to write for the simple fact that it would help me organize and examine my thoughts, and I really did not care one way or the other if anyone was reading. I cheerfully wrote things that the unprepared reader would think was stark raving mad. As long as you fear what other people think about you, you can not think for yourself. Until you start to think for yourself, you can not know who you really are. Once I could think for myself, I had to ask myself if I missed the point the moment I thought that this was something that was worth sharing with other people.

I already know that there are scarce few people in the world that think like me and scarcely a handful more who are capable of thinking some of the things I’ve thought. I can say that because I’ve spent a fair amount of time thinking about what other people have written and because I have no clue how to put some of my ideas into words.

So, what is the point? I mean, sure, I could keep pounding out blog posts that a rare handful of people will read on any given day. But given the lack of commentary I’ve received, I cannot fathom how interesting any of it is to my transient audience. I doubt that I am the person who will get “discovered” blogging on the web. I do not have the time to make this more than a convenient harbor for stray thoughts and impulses. In the desperate hope of supporting myself, I have already over-committed to school and work—the former in the hopes of finding a better form of the latter.

The problem is that there is a point. These thoughts, however I can capture and communicate them, are my reason for being. Whatever glimmer of my own understanding I am capable of transmitting to you, that is what makes my life meaningful because it is the only way I can pass on a glimpse of the greater understanding that life itself is meaningful.

I do not imagine myself to be specially gifted with insight, however. I do not pretend that I am here to enlighten anyone. Enlightenment is simply what happens when people strive for understanding in their thinking. In a world where people limit themselves to what they know—or what other people profess to be knowledge—a certain lack of widespread enlightenment is understandable.

I can even understand why people prefer to know things rather than understanding them, since knowledge implies mastery and ownership of the fact while understanding implies surrender and submission to the truth. Of course, knowledge and understanding are not entirely antagonistic; quite the opposite, they are mutually reinforcing, each one increasing the other without limit.

I see the process—the process of thinking—and while I can not tell you exactly what I mean when I say it, I see it as the point. I write to engage in thought, and I communicate to engage others in thought. When that fails to happen, when actions no longer serve that point…

In the absence of that point, life itself begins to lose focus.