Did You Hear the One About…

Stop me if you’ve heard this one.

A well off, upper middle class guy was unsatisfied with his life. This lead to poor performance at his job and his marriage and almost everything else. Soon enough he had lost his job and his wife left him and took the kids and even the dog. Now destitute and alone, he was even more convinced there had to be more to all of this. He decided to find the meaning of life.

For years he traveled as a vagabond, chasing every lead he could find. He talked to clergy, philosophers, voodoo priest, gurus, wise men and anyone who would listen and try to answer his simple question. What is the meaning of life? No one had the answer.

But he kept hearing rumors, mere whispers at times, that there was a man who knew. Tucked away is some lost corner of the world was someone with the answer he needed. He would find this man.

For even more years he followed every dead end trail, surviving only by the kindness of strangers. His clothes became tatters, his body broken, but his will stayed tempered steel. He needed to know.

Finally, while following a vapor of a wisp of a spider’s silk of a chance, he found himself climbing a mountain in Nepal. He had no gear, his shoes and clothes falling apart. He lost several fingers and most of his toes to frost bite on the accent by the time he reached the summit. There, in the lotus position, but floating four feet off of the rocky surface of the peak, was the man he had sought. Almost dead from hypothermia and starvation, he stumbled to the man.

“Please, please, tell me the meaning of life!” he said with as much force as his weakened body could muster.

“Life,” the floating old man said, eyes remaining closed, his white beard, hair and robes blowing in the wind, “Life is a fountain.”

“What?” Rage began to boil in the seeker’s body. “Life is a fountain? I have lost everything in my life! Family, friends, wealth, health, self-respect! God damn it! I have lost fingers and toes to get here and you tell me, life is a fountain?” His shaking with rage was greater that his shivers from the cold.

The levitating old man opened his eyes, blinked his eyes and then looked at the shambles of a human before him, and once again spoke.

“Life’s not a fountain?”