How Do I Make My Life More Meaningful? Plato and Coffee Help.

Again, I am writing from the seat of a flight–United 369 from San Antonio to Denver. Yes, there is at least one bloody Mary involved. I’ve been looking out of the window pondering how I make my life more meaningful and I thought it might be helpful if I just start writing about it.

The South of France Helps

I was not smart enough to major in something so lofty as philosophy in college, but I have always had an interest in the subject. I just don’t know anything about it. A couple of years ago, some dear friends invited my wife, kids and me to the south of France for vacation. Let me say, I highly recommend the experience. It was a great week, but there was just one problem. I am American and there was no television–at least none that I could understand. I had no choice but to engage in human communication and to read. What I didn’t know was that this trip was going to be an important stop on my perpetual journey towards spirituality and peace.

The villa we stayed in was magnificent. In fact, it was more like a mansion. There were five couples, with kids, in all. During the day, individual families explored side trips to Nice, San Tropez and Monte Carlo, but we all gathered together for a huge outside dinner each evening, under a magnificent Cote d’ Azure sky. We shared our experiences of the day and listened to our childrens’ excited stories about their adventures. Miles, my middle child, took a particular interest in the topless beaches in Cannes. That boy.

After the kids were all in bed, after wolfing down rich dessert and coffee, and after the last cigar was smoked, I just couldn’t sleep. Back at home, my normal routine would have been to watch Sportscenter, but the French were apparently boycotting ESPN. So, I had to read. And so I did.

Very soon, I came across a story by the great philosopher Plato. It was called The Allegory of the Cave. It is a story about several men who are imprisoned in a cave, by an ogre from a very young age. The men are bound together so tightly, they cannot move their heads, or even their eyes. They can only look forward, at the wall of the cave. They have been in this cave for so long, it’s all they can remember. They can see shadows on the wall and they can hear voices as people walk around outside, but this is all they know. It has been so long that the men think the shadows they see are the real world. It has been so long that now they are used to it.

One day, one of the men manages to break free. He turns around and, for the first time, he realizes he has been living in a cave. He sees light, but his eyes are slow to adjust. When they do, he goes to the entrance and sees there is a whole world out there. He sees people talking and walking about. He realizes the images he saw on the wall of the cave were nothing more than shadows cast by people outside of the cave. He goes back to the cave to share his knowledge with the others and to set them free. But, by now, the others are used to their way of thinking and they are content to treat their meager experience as life, as reality. The other prisoners do not welcome the news, instead, they want to kill the messenger.

Plato’s lesson is that our reality may not be what we think it is. He also teaches that it’s hard to look at what may be the real truth when we are so used to what we see and feel every day. Plato believed that although people may have forgotten what is reality, they can remember it again. He called this process anamnesis. If you have followed Better Life After 50 for a while, you know we call it forgiveness.

I have often thought about the story of the cave. It resonated with me. I started to ask myself some questions about my true nature, and if I really wanted to know the answer. I mean, if someone really traveled from the future and visited me, would I believe them? Would you? Baby steps.

Ah, Coffee Beans

And then, there is the oft-told tale of the carrot, the egg and the coffee beans. There are many variations, but the gist of it goes something like this. One day, a wise man had a student who was having a hard time with life. It just seemed things weren’t going the way of the student’s plans and it was all just becoming too overwhelming. The wise man recognized a teaching moment was afoot. He put three pots of water on the stove and brought them all to a boil. In the first pot he placed a carrot, in the second he placed an egg, and in the last he placed some ground coffee beans.

He explained to his student that we all think we have a nature, but that the stresses and pressures of life can test that nature. How you respond to those pressures, can reveal your nature—or at least how you see yourself. The boiling water put tremendous stress and pressure on our three commodities. The carrot completely wilted under the pressure. The egg hardened inside—surviving the stress, but becoming rigid, hard, and unyielding. But, the coffee beans changed the very nature of the water. They transformed ordinary hot water into coffee. The wise man turned to his student and asked him what he would be in the face of stress, the carrot, the egg, or the coffee beans.

Our true nature is that of spirit, not the bodies we appear to be. This is just a temporary state—we’ve just forgotten it. We can remember our true nature through forgiveness. Facing that nature can be scary, like it was for the prisoners confronted with a different reality than the shadows on the cave wall. Or, for that matter, it was scary for the coffee beans to face the boiling water! But the shadows were only shadows, even if the prisoners thought they were real. And the coffee completely transformed the utility of the beans. Consider, just for a minute, what your true nature is. Remember the cave and don’t be afraid to be coffee.

As always, we invite readers of Better Life After 50 to offer your comments and questions. Please feel free to leave your feedback below.