Will's Sojourn to find the meaning of life
Journey along with Will. Discover what events in his life have brought him to this quest..
 
Will's writing, stories, and essays on the Meaning of life
 
The Letter writing campaign
I have embarked on a letter writing campaign to many people of the world asking them what they think the meaning of life is. Read the letter, and read the list of people I have sent it to. See their responses, if I get any. As of August 2, 2005 there have been no responses.
 
The Question in a bottle
I will be sending out notes in a bottle. You can keep track of how that is going here. Have I received any replies?
 
People
What do people say the meaning of life is? Learn more here
 
Books
What famous, and not so famous books are there about the meaning of life?
   
Movies
The meaning of life has been covered in movies. Learn more about them.
   
What Comes Next
Inquiries into what happens to us after we die.
   
More
the meaning of life has been explored in many different ways by many different people from music to poetry. Learn more about it here.
   
Quotes
Read quotes about the meaning of life
   
The Blog
Here you can get Will's daily thoughts on his quest.
   
The Bulletin Board
Join the Google group. Here you can read what other people have to say about the meaning of life. You can also post your own thoughts.
   
The Golden Rule:
There is one very important rule that must be followed in this quest. Find out what it is.
   
My Personal website where I have a lot of searching essays about my life and the meaning of it: 2007 - 2008 - 2009
   

 

The Deer

Did you ever get the feeling in your life that you were on the wrong path?
"What is the use of running if we are not on the right way?"
"Was hilft laufen wenn man nicht auf den rechten Weg ist?"

--German Proverb

   

I was commuting to work every day and it was almost an hour each way. Sometimes in the morning on the way to the office a feeling would come over me. I am sure you have gotten this feeling too. It is a feeling of bewilderment. That's the best I can describe it. Just bewilderment. Wondering what I am doing, why I am doing this. On some mornings, through the glass of my windshield I would see something that touched my heart. Sometimes it was the color of the moon as it set or rose or sometimes just the crispness of the air or maybe the texture of the clouds. In every case a little bit of the beauty of the world crept into my commute. When something like this happened it always made me feel bad. My thoughts would go to "What am I doing wrong here?" Is it right that I am going off to the office building to spend ten hours in a cube to do things that really didn't matter? It always made me feel disconnected from what really matters in life.

One morning the feeling was overwhelming and I just had to pull over and think for a few minutes. I was driving north on the three lane highway, in the left lane and just making my way to another day of work. It was early but the sun was already up and burning the dew away. The traffic was light so I was making good time. And just like this, in a flash I passed by a deer. It was laying in the median between the northbound and southbound lanes. It was only a foot from the lane of the highway and it was curled up into a ball as if were taking a nap. It looked exactly as a cat would when it curls up to sleep. It was dead. It probably tried to make it across the highway during the night, got hit by a car and crawled over to the median curled itself into a ball and died.

Two thoughts came to me. The first was that the deer was so beautiful. There is a purity about a deer. It is a simple creature that lives simply, raises its family and grazes on the world. It has a beautful coat and a beautiful grace about the way it moves.

The second thought that hit me was that something was very wrong with the picture I belonged to. The automobile has poisoned the world. Everyday all the cars pollute the air, spill gas and oil into the rivers. We pave over the beauty of the world and we collide into and kill the creatures that walk it.

So on my way to the office, and my cube this morning a deep feeling of loss came over me. I knew that something was wrong with what I was doing.