An adage famously ascribed to the mythologist Joseph Campbell says that we desire not so much the meaning of life as the feeling of being alive. But that is a false dichotomy based on the generalization that we are feeling rather than thinking beings. The truth is that we are both thinkers and feelers—that is our human paradox, the price paid for an awareness of our condition.
If we stopped for a moment to take stock of our limitations, we would understand that these two capacities are incompatible, forever destined to compete for the same resources. We would realize in our hearts that we will always be disunited in our desires, as quenchless as we are obstinate in our endless search for a sense of impossible wholeness.
