Why ARE we here..??

Yesterday was my non-Silver Wedding. I had wondered how it would feel - we've been apart for 7 years, divorced for 5, so a fair few anniversaries have come and gone. Still, Silver Weddings are still celebrated pretty seriously, and I wasn't sure how I would feel about it on the day.

It was tough. I dreamt the night before about my Ex's family - including his father, who died over twenty years ago, and who was so alive in the dream that I woke feeling really strange about the passage of time since the wedding. It's always fascinated me how you can look back through time to a particular event and it can seem like centuries ago, but look back at that same event, and it could be yesterday. This is one of the things which demonstrates to me that time isn't real at all. (Another being, how you can not see someone for years but slip easily into talking as though you've never been apart).

So I got to thinking, as you do, about how many people on the wedding photos (I didn't get the album out, I know them by heart) aren't around any more. Some people keep their families intact down the years, we began to lose our wedding guests quite early. Two years on, one parent had vanished. Another two, an uncle of mine... and now, a quarter of a century down the line, at least 10 significant guests are gone, and many bit-players too.

Which brought me back to my perennial (everyone's perennial) question - What is the point of being here at all? I don't mean that to sound depressed, it's a genuine question which puzzles me from time to time. I have lots of answers - but they all seem to involve what I mean in context - I am someone's parent, friend, teacher etc. It used to be 'because God made me and loves me' but that one doesn't work at all for me now, as I suspect I may have made God...

Does there have to be a Point? This way Existentialism (about which I know incredibly little) lies.

Yet I do persist in believing - intuiting - that there IS Meaning. I refuse to be just the sum of my parts, and to have relationships which can be scientifically proven to be meaningless.

And I suppose somewhere in that refusal, that determination to have meaning, lies the answer. Greater souls than I have struggled with this and gone away from the fight empty-handed, but that doesn't mean I don't need to grapple too. In fact, I suspect that IS our meaning - that in this seemingly random (yet intricately inter-connected) Universe, humans are movers and shakers simply by virtue of asking the questions; almost like unwitting computer programmers.

Today I saw that Google has found this blog. It feels oddly comforting. I think most of us want to leave our mark on the world, and for me having children doesn't feel that way - they are THEM, not me. I don't want to burden them with validating my life (although of course they do, infinitely so).

This is the year I am going to find some answers! :)

I got this unexpected text from my Ex, which made me feel better in a bitter-sweet kind of way: Strange day. All kinds of emotion. Just thought I'd say it wasn't wasted time. Thank you for then and now. X

One day we too will be memories in a photo album. I wonder if those who follow us will have the answer to my question, and tell a new generation about me and why I was so unforgettable? It struck me as a child that once you are further back than 'Grandma' nobody gets emotional about you not being there any longer. And that's as it should be, isn't it? Otherwise, how would we cope day-to-day with all the emotion?

I'm beginning to feel a hint of Carpe Diem coming on!