My friend Greg wants to devote a good bit of his time to helping people find meaning in their lives where it seems in the last hundred years it has vanished. The so-called Revolution started in Italy with the theme of revolting against "the loss of meaning and the death of God."
I find it in eating and drinking, for instance, which I think is somewhat unusual. I've somehow developed a rather healthy attitude towards consumption somewhere in there. Socrates says early on in the Symposium, "We shall drink only as much as pleases us." Good rule to follow, that. And if it pleases you to eat and drink a lot, then so be it, and if it pleases you to drink and eat less, then so be that too. Then (at least in theory) you will never, you know, be... unpleased.
I also find it quite purely in music (have all my life), and more recently in film, and still more recently in, well, most other art too. That really is a recent development... I've read poetry and seen paintings and enjoyed them, but my stoic rationality (those of you who know me can stop giggling now, I'm trying to make a point here) has developed an ability to step aside and cause me physical reaction to beauty these days...
I'm rambling again, and this wasn't meant to be an emotional outpouring, journal-style, but I did say "random stuff," right? You get what you pay for.
Time rolls on. BEWARE.--Professor Robin Wagner-Pacifici, 28 Jan 1999 [bAK]