Making Life Matter
The boy boasted that he knew "everything."
"That's pretty cool," I answered. "Everything?"
"Everything. Ask me any question."
"What is the meaning of life?"
Without missing a beat, he replied, "Ichiro."
Solid response. The second best answer to that question I've ever heard from a preschooler, second only to the five-year-old who laughed as she dismissed me, "That's silly. It doesn't mean anything."
I don't make a habit of asking young children about the meaning of life, but over the years, usually while goofing around, I've probably posed it a couple dozen times. Aside from these two responses, every other child has simply ignored me, not even shrugging and I don't blame them. It is, at bottom, an uninteresting question, despite its apparent popularity among philosophers and theologians.
While I'm certain there is someone out there who has experienced a child who has expressed an abiding interest, by and large children don't tend to concern themselves such philosophical pap as the meaning of life. They are generally too busy to naval gaze about any picture bigger than the one CONTINUE READING: Teacher Tom: Making Life Matter