My life as you and I have known it is over. My endless restlessness and questioning, my empathy and sensuality, my liberal and anarchic tendencies; along with the moralism, cruelty and cowardice of the bourgeoisie community of my former hometown Franklin and most of my religious friends and family, all have combined to crucify the old me.

Ah, the paradox of life. This torture has provided within me a crucible of refinement and joy. What I call an unexpected gift. Or as author Chuck Palahniuk, author of Fight Club says, ”That’s the best revenge of all: happiness. Nothing drives people crazier than seeing someone have a good fucking life.”

Note: For those of you from my old life who have an issue with the language in this quote, read this post.

The layers underneath the title of this post are fascinating. They bring an unmeasurable aura of depth to this new me—especially when tempered with almost sixty years of life. Consideration means continuous and careful thought, a matter weighed or taken into account when formulating a plan, an opinion obtained by reflection.

And the word further lends even more weight: to a greater degree or extent, to or at a more advanced point, and to assist the progress of.

Consider this: A meaningful life, in my opinion, begins at birth with the unmeasurable, goes through measurable events as it is lived (especially in the first half), and in the second half should again become unmeasurable.

Life, in the body, is a measurable thing. As of this writing, I have lived 21,409 days. To measure precisely, I am 58 years, 7 months, 10 days, 10 hours, 33 minutes, and 45 seconds old. In physical nature everything is measurable, and the body is physical nature itself.

But the soul is unmeasurable. The soul is expressed by emotion and mediated by the spirit and will always be unmeasurable. The new me intuits that a maturing body is able to call on the soul through the spirit to become who it is destined to be.

The essence of humanity—where soul meets body, where the measurable once again becomes the unmeasurable, has the opportunity to become existential, through the messy and the mundane, what we call everyday life. I believe the results of a meaningful life should always be more than a measurable existence.

In Western society today, a life of “meaning” starts with an unmeasurable aura in the bloody and messy miracle of birth, and goes through measurable actuals—that of forming an identity, protecting a reputation, carving out a career, making money, starting a family, doing everyday life—in order to be a “success”.

Unfortunately, it seems the only way to get desperate enough to be who you truly are—is through doing the measurable. One must follow the expected order—the laws of nature and the institutions of life.

But as time goes by, if the body is to become truly harmonious with the soul, a person must again evoke unmeasurable qualities. The physical life revolving around the institutions of family, society, religion, and education  begin to lessen in importance and the emotional and spiritual life—the very essence of ones’ existence—begins to emerge.

Could it be that the philosopher Heidegger was a harbinger of this ideal?  That the messiness of everyday being rather than the far reaches of institutional life is most meaningful? In other words, it is not just the measurable doing of the first life, but also the unmeasurable being of the second life that together embody the greatest potential for meaning, truth, and freedom.

As I consider this further, a portion of existentialist philosophy and mine seem to converge. When body and soul become one, this cohesive integration can be revealed by the simplest of considerations. For example, a table is not just a table: It is utilitarian, a physical table we use to wrap gifts and where we gather and work as a board of directors and decide things; it is a spiritual table, where we eat meals together as sacrament and celebrate holidays; and it is an emotional table where we encourage others and ask questions. The table is both measurable and unmeasurable.

Even further consideration tells us the table is an example of the measurable, the unmeasurable, and the cohesion of both all at once. We can eat and encourage at the same time. One can consider the table a mere ‘object’, but this does violence to everyday being.

Everyday Being. Could it be one of life’s most indispensable gifts? And ironically, this ideal was something I did not pause to consider until the old me was placed on the cross, if you will.

The person I was in the first half of life—a “fortunate” part of the classic middle-class with my entitled and very measurable combination of moralism, cruelty and cowardice—could never incarnate the words cohesion and congruence in relation to everyday being. In psychological terms I was fragmented. My being was emotionally, spiritually, and physically broken into separate parts.

The old me chose measurable words over unmeasurable words. It chose success over meaning, answers over questions, dogma over freedom, sympathy over empathy, and doing over being. The measurable caused fragmentation and despair, yet the unmeasurable foreshadowed cohesion and hope.

The crucifixion of that measurable life changed everything.

Now full circle, I have come back to my birthplace in the Appalachians. I am beginning to feel comfortable in my skin, my soul, and my spirit—no matter how wrinkled they are becoming. Instead of looking at a lily, or a tree, or a sunrise, or a star, or a table, I SEE it, I actually see it. And further more, I pause to consider it.

How appropriate it is that while nestled in the hollow where we live (and how ironic that the locals call it Slaughter Hollow), one can only witness the radiant joy of sunrise. Sunsets, what throughout life I’ve called “happy sadnesses”, are blocked and rendered invisible by these ageless yet primordial mountains.

In my little book called Ruminations, I sum it up this way: “Every shadow no matter how deep is threatened by morning light.”

Upon further consideration, perhaps the greatest revenge of all is not happiness. Perhaps no matter how happy or how sad, it is the gift of freedom to be who I am everyday that is the ultimate retribution.