the meaning of life: indieweb carnival january 2026
A big one for my first IndieWeb Carnival post, graciously hosted by Jeremiah Lee this month.
How grateful I was, then, to be part of the mystery
To love and to be loved
Let's just hope that is enough!
There's your answer, I suppose.
It's a lyric from a Bright Eyes song I knew by heart as an angsty sixteen year old of the Bush era, but of course it didn't click then that something as earnest as love could be the answer to anything. It's been a process. My zoomer friends would say something about being cringe and free.
It's my first time watching the Sopranos, and, in my defense, HBO put out a lot of good TV around that era and you couldn't keep up with all of it. Anthony Jr.'s existential episode in the second season was similar at least a few of my adolescent years: I was a godless, broody, nihilistic, and generally pretty miserable teenager.
I teach middle schoolers now, who are starting to hit some of the big questions around life and meaning - or at least starting to understand that adults don't get it and are probably wrong a lot of the time, which makes some of them furious and frustrated and betrayed. Some truly don't care and are kind of sliding through life (happy-ish!); some are even well-adjusted to the horrors of the world enough to know that they still need to do their homework and try a little to muddle through our failed institutions. But that first group, they're my people.
My prerequisite to thinking love was a reasonable answer to this meaning-of-life business was the realization that I'm part of a greater mystery, which is more of a feeling than a thought I can type into words on my laptop. It's an acceptance I found through sobriety and meditation and pink cloud days that I am part of an ineffable, unanswerable thing that is bigger than me. I am agnostic, I belong to no spiritual tradition, but I feel it and see it when I am of service to others and when I am caught by the web of life and humanity. When the lady at the thrift store keeps my cart from moving while I put the awkward shelf in, the way the light catches dew on a spiderweb, when I see kids falling out laughing at the bus stop. The mystery is hard at work, some people call it awe. Same thing I think.
To love and to be loved is my answer to the meaning of life because it is all there is to do right now. It's all we can do, all we must do, and all we have to do at once. It's my purpose and what keeps me showing up with love for kids at my school, even when they're mean and nasty and rude. It's how I showed up for end of life patients when I worked at a hospital, and for their tired adult children and for nurses on hour eleven and for the that custodial staff people pretend not to see on the elevator with them. It's my friend taking me to my late dog's euthanasia appointment because she wasn't going to let me do it alone. It's my friend that met me to walk when I had long covid and had one good mobile hour a day.
Love is the people using whistles to protect their neighbors. It's that one really tired city councilperson with no money trying to actually get shit done while being harassed by internet edgelords. It's the people making their art because if they don't make it they will be miserable, and they love themselves and the world too much to keep it inside them.
