What must be done to justify a life?
I ask myself this question often. Or, truthfully: it seems to pose itself. Rarely is it accompanied by the quiet premise that life needs justification.
I could construct a genealogy of that claim. Its relation to feelings of indebtedness and tales of ancestral transgression. Its proximity to the belief that one must suffer to seek the good. Though this account does not stop the question whispering through my life.
I will tell you a history of being haunted.
•
As a child, I lived without the question.
I was born into a loving home and rarely went without. The only traumas were bodily: broken bones, failing hearts, and organs gone berserk. I learned early that systems exist to convert pain into profit.
The question's shape became nascent.
My kid existence was otherwise simple. I enjoyed reading, devouring books like a starved animal. Fantasy novels showed me that small people could transcend their circumstances. This truth felt like a warm light which the darkness of daily life sought to extinguish. The adults around me were tired; their ambitions seemed pallid. I saw in them a terrible stillness of the imagination. Had they forgotten that they could read?
The question developed, pearl-like about the grit of disappointment.
Though I wanted to make a career of writing books, I detoured into small town theatre. Pretending to be other people in unreachable times and places was like reading: both proved I could live in many worlds. Yet acting in plays earned me time with and respect from adults whose weirdness and vibrancy I admired. My enthusiasm for acting soon found a capitalist outlet; over ten years, I converted my joy into professionalism. When I realized I no longer enjoyed chasing the approval of strangers, the question arrived with cold lethality. As I lay in my hospital bed, I heard it:
What must be done to justify a life?
While recovering from this illness, the question faded. Surviving made me sensitive to the miracle of life. This peace lasted a year.
•
The question was returning. I convinced myself that I needed to read as much as possible in order to write a great book. Writing a great book, I thought, would answer the question. So I studied great books at college, spending all the money piled up from those joyless years. Then I wrote a great book. It was about the hard truths required of staying alive; the happy promise of fantasy novels seemed an artifact of youth buried too deep to recover. After finishing this book, depression—sickness, fate, warning—crippled me. The question took up residence in my lungs, posing itself with each breath.
What must be done to justify a life?
While recovering from this illness, the question faded. New chemical habits returned joy to the simple facts of the day. This peace lasted a year.
During that year, I had a mystical experience. Its central truth was that life needn't be justified. More starkly: perfect love is unconditionally and forever available. I finally knew—with my whole self, mind and body—that the question was no longer relevant. My sense of relief was more potent than any earthly drug.
Then: a pandemic.
COVID's death, abandonment, loneliness, and damage were obvious. But its massive and rapid social reconfigurations prompted a hard-earned hope. The promise of fantasy novels was alive in the world: people could rise above their circumstances; heroism was real; a world's logic could change overnight. Civilization felt malleable. This truth lasted for two years, then we were hurried back to pretending to care about money. As the promise vanished from people's eyes, the question took its place.
What must be done to justify a life?
•
I faced the question the only way that felt honest, having survived a plague: by living out a childhood dream. I decided to write a fantasy novel. Though imagination was dying again in daily life, I could revive it privately. So I wrote the book. Its glow nursed me through bad days.
While writing, the question faded. I centered my life on telling a good story to those who cared to hear it. This peace lasted a year.
•
I feel the question returning. I feel it in the small hours; I sense it in my bones. I yearn to be free of it. I want to forget it, or to conquer it finally with some grand act of service. I tell myself: if I work hard enough, if I do well enough, I could put all the tools down for good. I could rest.
The years of peace—from health, conviction, revolution, fantasy—feel lost in fog. Joy irrecuperable in its distance from now.
What must be done to justify a life?
The weight of the question presses down, its ghost at my throat.
I respond to the question the only ways I know how: I dream up another book; I help my wife; I do what I can at work. And, as I type this, I listen to the dog snoring at my feet, hoping a simple love is enough.
