Our Universal Hunger for Meaning

The Bushman in the Kalahari Desert talk about two “hungers.”

There is the Great Hunger and there is the Little Hunger.

The Little Hunger wants food for the belly;

but the Great Hunger,

the greatest hunger of all, is the hunger for meaning....

 

There’s ultimately only one thing that makes

human beings deeply and profoundly bitter,

and that is to have thrust upon them

a life without meaning....

 

There is nothing wrong in searching for happiness....

But of far more comfort to the soul...

is something greater than happiness

or unhappiness, and that is meaning.

Because meaning transfigures all....

Once what you are doing has for you meaning,

it is irrelevant whether you’re happy

or unhappy. You are content—you are not alone

in your Spirit—you belong.

 

-- Sir Laurens van der Post from Hasten Slowly, a film by Mickey Lemle

Posted 八月 17th, 2010 by Oneness Blogger