Biographical retrospective: Early adulthood and the search for purpose/meaning in life

Looking back to my early adulthood; it is evident that I was assailed by a sense of meaninglessness. 

This, in retrospect, was ultimately inevitable, given that I had since childhood decided to share our mainstream civilizational assumption that there was neither meaning nor purpose to ultimate reality - that it all "just happened" as a combination of accidents and necessity.

But there was also a more pressing problem for me personally; in that, after graduating from medical school, I could barely tolerate the work and conditions of being a doctor. In particular, the long hours including being on-call (and mostly working) through whole days and the nights between, was something that rapidly wore me down, hardened my personality, and amplified my selfish and hedonistic traits. 

I also found my work meaningless, in the sense that - even ideally - I had the continual sense that I was trying to keep things going for people - in a situation where things were not going anywhere in particular, nor for any particular reason. 

It all seemed very negative - what I would nowadays characterize as "double negative"; in other words, trying (albeit usually failing) to deal with problems; but without any positive notion of what was supposed to happen after the problems were dealt with. 

OK; as a doctor I might be part of a system that (sometimes) kept people alive, functioning, pain free... but without some sense of what the life of a functioning, pain free individual was for.  

I had supposed, as most people do (vaguely) suppose, that "doing good" was its own reward - but for me it just was not; or only feebly so. I usually felt "we" were not doing good in addressing misery and threat of death, fairly often suspected "we" made things worse, especially in the longer term - but even when we did "help people" I could not shake the question of what we were helping; helping to do what? 

For many reasons, I therefore needed to and ought to get out of clinical medicine; and into something else. At first this was into science; and I began a doctorate involving laboratory research into clinical problems - analysing blood samples (which, as part of a team, I organized and gathered) and post-mortem brain samples (from an already existing brain bank). 

But while this empirical science went very well in terms of discovering things and publishing papers etc; I was still plagued by a sense of meaninglessness in it - especially after it became evident how much of science was subjective judgment and standard group assumptions and practices. 

I had supposed that science was a special method of discovering real and objective reality - but it turned out that this was a text-book illusion (or delusion) - science seemed more like a set of of fundamental shared conventions, only within which was there research and discovery.

Once I had learned the relevant conventions and techniques, it was pretty much a routine: cranking a handle - at any rate there was little depth of satisfaction, and it did not answer to this nagging need for meaning. 

I had an idea that I might find what I wanted in the arts and humanities, instead of the sciences; or, at least, that they might be a suitable "backdrop" for my own investigations. Implicitly, I assumed that the answer to what I sought lay in that direction - if not on the official curriculum, then nearby or by extension of it. 

My first step was to read philosophy with more seriousness and intent than I had been doing up to that point. I attended a couple of evening classes about Wittgenstein, was drawn-in; and then applied and was accepted to study a philosophy degree at Trinity College, Cambridge (presumably, because that was where W. had been a Fellow). 

I then had second thoughts about whether this two-year (accelerated) degree was the right thing, and how much it would cost; and instead arranged to go to Durham for a one year Master by research, in English Literature. During that year; I read a good deal in both English and Philosophy, attended seminars in both subjects, and read papers to their journal clubs. 

But by the end of the year; I realized that I did not want to take these subjects further in a professional sense; but instead embarked on the plan of making a living from teaching and researching science; while continuing to do "academic" work in the arts and humanities in my own time. 

This continued for several years; but instead of finding what I had originally sought, I was instead drifting further away from it. 

Eventually... I recognized that what I was looking for was not to be found in any academic discourse, nor any combination of such discourses - including not in any recognized philosophy. 

And that was when I began to shift my primary focus to theology, to God, to Jesus Christ - and all that followed.   

Lessons? It now seems obvious that I did not find any meaning or purpose to my life or the world for the simple reasons that I had already (at the very beginning) made the fundamental assumption that reality was accidental and/or entailed - so there could not be any purpose or meaning for relevance to myself.  

Or, more exactly; any meaning or purpose I located was wholly subjective; put-there by me, or copied by me; and that this had no higher status or validity than the self-pleasing delusions of a madman or drug-addict. 

It was not until I realized that I had made this assumption; that I could challenge, and unmake, the assumption - when I found I implicitly believed in just what I denied: that there was a creator, that it was a personal deity, and that this God loved me. 

Finally (and by then I was about forty-nine years old!) I got onto the right track!

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NOTE: Some of the same ground as the above, and other stuff, is covered in my (so far 12K words) autobiographical notes: Lucky Philosopher.