Who am I?

Who am I?

This question, and its answer, one which expresses the fundamental yearning of every heart, is the key to a meaningful existence. Not everyone asks the question aloud, and some may not recognize that this question is the one which drives them and all of their searching. Some of us seek the answer in religious activity, others look for the answer in accomplishment, pleasure, relationships, fame, or many other pursuits. When we spend our lives looking in places which have no hope of answering this question on a fundamental level our sense of emptiness and desperation grow with every day.

Sadly, this seems to have been the case for a beautiful woman, an up and coming fashion model, who took her own life recently in New York City. The headlines from June 28, 2008 read as follows,

“A model who walked runways around the world and graced the covers of fashion magazines fell from a Manhattan building Saturday in an apparent suicide, New York City police said.

Ruslana Korshunova, known for her distinctive long hair and green eyes, was apparently killed in the fall at 2:30 p.m. onto busy Water Street outside the Financial District condo building where she lived.”

As the story unfolds we come to find out that this 20 year old, formerly from Kazakhstan, who is described as having fairytale beauty, jumped to her death from her swank Manhattan apartment. Just outside her ninth floor window, she actually cut her way through construction netting which surrounded her building in order to prepare for her last catwalk.  Those that knew her have expressed bewilderment, shock, and their own inability to understand how someone so “happy” and “sweet” and “loving” could make such a decision.

What is so sad about the story, of course, is not that she was a beautiful supermodel who graced the pages of many a magazine cover. The sobering, sad reality, is that many make this decision each day in America and are never written about due to their lack of fame. Rather, the real tragedy is that she was a lost soul who came to find that neither looks, nor travel, nor money, nor acclaim, nor any of the other perks that come with such a life, could save her from the most fundamental of quests–the desire to know who we are and to whom we belong.

There was a hint of the intensity of this search in her heart just a few months prior to her suicide. Though those around her perceived her as being “on top of the world”, as one friend put it, her inner world, apparently, was much different. In one of her blogs, three months before her death, she wrote, “It hurts, as if someone took a part of me, tore it out, mercilessly stomped all over it and threw it out.  My dream is to fly.  Oh, my rainbow, it is too high.”

The hunger for meaning and a place in this life trumps all other desires.  As Viktor Frankl  demonstrates in his profound book, Man’s Search for Meaning, the cry of every heart is to find significance.  In studies he and others have conducted over the years the research continually demonstrates that “finding purpose and meaning in life” is our most fundamental urge.  Even amidst the horrors of concentration camp life, Frankl affirms that this desire remains intact.  And, as the countless stories of those like Ruslana demonstrate, the hunger to know who we are is not quenched by fame or fortune.

In a culture where we have educated ourselves into imbecility and pleasured ourselves into chronic boredom, we have brought on a pandemic of what Frankl refers to as the “existential vacuum”.  Simply put, as a people, we are at a loss on the inside.  We cannot seem to make sense of our place in this world, who we are, what we should be about.

Scripturally, when we cut ourselves off from the Giver of life and meaning, no alternative remains but an existential vacuum.  We were created for relationship with God, and all other relationships function properly, including our relationship with ourselves, only when we accept and live in this reality.  We were, indeed, meant to fly. But we can only do so upon the wings of God’s love.  The rainbow we all long for is found in the heart and mind of God and His purposes for us.  Anything else, all other loves and pursuits, are empty promises which tear us apart, leaving us as fragmented forms of what we are intended to be.

The life we are all looking for is found in knowing whose we are, and who He has created us to be.  It all begins with Him, the Alpha and Omega, the One from whom all life and meaning is derived.

As Jesus has suggested, “I am the way, the truth, and the life…”  In Him we fly.  Attempting to soar in any other way leads us all to that nine story plunge into meaninglessness.

Come fly with me,

Bruce Smith

optimuslife.org

This entry was posted on 1. July 2008 at 09:01 and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.