…makes you stronger

As humans, we are very adept at perceiving patterns.  It’s one of the things that makes our brains so adept at such things as language acquisition, facial recognition, and musical understanding (whateverthat is).  We’re also susceptible to seeing patterns where there aren’t any, finding “meaning” in the “noise.”

Finding meaning, then, is an existential part of being homo sapiens, and I suppose that once our brains have gotten through the immediate challenges of mastering language and basic social skills to survive, it’s not surprising that it shifts to searching for meaning of its very own existence.

This episode of This American Life,then, resonates with me on two levels: First, it has the essence of being “miraculously” timely, topping off a week of ever increasingly spookily-serendipitous Podcasts showing up in my queue.  Second, it asks (metaphorically, at least) what is left of “looking for meaning” once one has looked death square in the face–-and survived.  Needless to say, it’s not a light and airy listen…