At the age of 26, I went through a depression. The worst of my life… to then. A business I started with a friend collapsed. It gutted me financially, emotionally, personally, socially.
It caused me to ask questions: Does my life have meaning? Does any life have meaning? Why not just end it all? Would it really matter?
I already had a Ph.D. in philosophy (plus a sub-major in history) so I turned to philosophy for answers…. answers that, over the years, proved worse than useless.
I started to jot down some early, crude notes for an article on the meaning of life.
Three years later, my life had turned around. I was travelling the country, researching and writing a national manual on local government and the arts. I had a TV series under option. I was building my first home.
But there was one piercing thought looping around and around in my head. A thought that would not let go of me: There has to be more to life than this…
For years I thought I would write one book on the meaning of life. I called it ‘Towards Meaningful Lives’. I gave it to a friend who was going through some major challenges in life. “I feel like you’ve been following me around for the last three years.”
But I ripped that book apart. For many years, I thought that it was going to be a trilogy on the meaning of life covering philosophy, psychology and spirituality.
But then… well… let’s just say I realized that what I was engaged in was a project and it would take as much space and effort and time and titles as it would take…
