Meatloaf and the Meaning of Life
It all started tonight with bringing the meatloaf home. No actually it started long before that though I didn't know it then. Tonight, while on an errand to get a meatloaf for dinner, after picking up the meatloaf and bringing the meatloaf home in the car I began to think of how I met my wife Cathy. Nancy, Cathy's sister, asked if I wanted to go with her and her sister (Cathy) to see a local fireworks display. She didn't mention meatloaf. Not that there was any reason to bring up the topic of meatloaf, or not to, meatloaf just never came up.
At the fireworks I didn't think about meatloaf, there were too many other distractions and I guess I never really thought about meatloaf that much even when not distracted. Perhaps if there had been a fireworks that looked like a meatloaf, or if a Meatloaf song had been played, maybe I would have made the connection - but no such association was made that evening. If we had perhaps had meatloaf for dinner that night I'm sure it would have played a special role in our evolving history, but we had pizza not meatloaf. Come to think of it pizza holds no 'special' place in our life so who's to say meatloaf would have either. Even when Cathy and I got together again and talked long into the nights about books, records, philosophy, history, etc., still - no mention of meatloaf. At our wedding two years later - no promises of meatloaf were in our vows to my recollection. On our honeymoon, three long weeks of driving across country and back only ourselves to talk to - not a thought or mention of meatloaf !
At some point in our blooming courtship, cohabitation, and early marriage we must have had meatloaf for dinner but if so I never placed any significance in the culinary event. I had no thought then that 25 years hence I would be bringing home meatloaf. Who knows how many times in our 25 years we've had meatloaf, I still saw no great importance to any of these occasions. Lets see, it might be possible that we would have say 5 or 6 meatloaves a year that would be 125-150 meatloaves total (not counting tonight's meatloaf). Yet not until tonight have I attached any significance to even one of the meatloaves we've shared over the years. What a selfish uncaring bastard !
Over the course of a lifetime most people contemplate the meaning of life at some point. If not in the 'larger' sense certainly it crosses one's mind "Why am I here ?". I doubt that many have answered "Meatloaf". Yet tonight for me suddenly while putting on the cruise control and watching the present moment through my windshield listening to the CD player* the sum of my existence seemed suddenly to boil down to one very clear thing - meatloaf. Expanding this hypothesis would also mean that everyone who has had a role in shaping who I have become must also have had at the center of their invisible universe meatloaf even though they were never aware of such a guiding force.
So now I ask myself, why has it taken me 57 years to find this magical meatloaf meaning of life, and now that I know the answer is my journey here finished or actually just beginning? My birth, my childhood, my survival to elder adulthood, meeting and spending many happy years with Cathy - the whole strange trip can now be neatly wrapped up in a metaphorical meatloaf sitting on the front seat of my car, at six o'clock on Sunday evening October 5, 2003.
After all the years of searching, studying, struggle, travel, frustration, and so many questions. Even after having been unknowingly face to face with the answer so many times it all seems now so easy. Life to me means simply "Bringing Home the Meatloaf".
I suppose if someone had offered that answer when I was 25 I would have dismissed or even more forcefully rejected the notion as I did often in those days. It wouldn't have seemed enough, I wouldn't have understood that a simple meatloaf means so much more than dinner. Now 32 years later I feel quite content with my newfound wisdom. I am at peace.
Finally. A meatloaf haiku.
Bringing home meatloaf
a cosmic flow of meaning
and dinner as well !
*CD - TRIUMVIRATE - Bloomfield, Hammond, Dr. John (1973)
Labels: Essays
