‘What Will I Do with My Life?’
ASK a middle-aged person, “What do you want to do with your life?” and you will often get a puzzled look. Most adults have settled into a routine of living, perhaps without giving it much thought. They may never have decided what they wanted to do with their lives, and they are no longer interested in the question. Perhaps they are even a little frightened by it, fearing that to ask such questions seriously is to invite a ‘mid-life crisis.’
With young people it is different. The question “What do you want to do with your life?” is urgent to them, even if they are not sure of the answer. Not surprisingly, young people are often far more concerned than their elders with finding ‘the meaning of life.’ But where?
Does Education Have the Answers?
If you are a young person, you spend much of your time in school. It is natural for you to think that education will somehow show you the meaning of life, but such hopes are often disappointed. “When I started college,” said one honor student, “I thought I would add new talents, new capabilities, new accomplishments to my life. Instead, each course I’ve taken, each good book I’ve read, each idea I’ve seriously considered has taken something away from me. I feel like an onion that has had layer after layer peeled away until there is nothing, nothing there at all.”
What happened? Instead of finding life’s meaning, this student, tossed about by arguments and equally plausible counterarguments, lost his bearings. After losing faith in his original beliefs, he had nothing to replace them with and was on the verge of concluding that life is meaningless.
This calls to mind a very astute observation made about 3,000 years ago that “to the making of many books [or, “opinions”] there is no end, and much devotion to them is wearisome to the flesh.” (Ecclesiastes 12:12) Seeking life’s meaning among the ‘great books’ and ‘great ideas’ of men is frustrating because these books and ideas contradict one another endlessly, as students quickly find out.
Does Science Offer Hope?
“Science and technology, hailed just a few years back as the sure solutions for all our increasingly complex societal problems, are both in trouble these days,” admits Dr. Lewis Thomas, a widely read science essayist. Nobel-prize winner Max Delbrück is even more blunt. “It’s obvious that science is not going to solve our problems,” he says.
Today’s adults were raised on optimistic slogans like “Better living through chemistry.” Young people, on the other hand, have grown up with the darker side of science. “Everyone talks about new breakthroughs into the secrets of nature. But somehow I can’t swallow this,” wrote a college student to his professor recently. “Breakthroughs, breakthroughs—where do they lead us? Atomic bombs, pollution, terrifying drugs: Are these what the frontiers of science are all about?”
“Please don’t answer me with clichés about the gap between ethics and scientific knowledge,” continued the student. “I have heard it all a hundred times. People believe our science is good, but our ethics are bad. This is exactly what I can’t swallow. Am I crazy? Are morality and knowledge really such separate things?”
This young student was making an important point. Knowledge without morality, as when knowledge of nuclear physics is used to build atomic bombs, may offer brilliant inventions, but does it offer hope? Does it give mankind a reason for living? Or does it merely increase the likelihood that men will wind up by destroying themselves?
“I think the further course of history will not be decided by further discoveries in science,” says Dr. Delbrück, “but by . . . questions about human values.” In other words, it is more important to know the difference between right and wrong than to know how to build a better bomb.
But the world today seems far more interested in bombs than in right and wrong. Young people sense this, and it can drive them to give up trying to do what is right. “I am 15 years old,” wrote one boy. “I don’t smoke pot or pop pills, even though I’ve wanted to lots of times. I try not to steal or vandalize or hurt other people . . . what I mean is, all my life I’ve tried to do the right thing. Then a few months ago I realized that it doesn’t make any difference. Whatever kind of life I lead, it’s not going to change the way things are. Now I don’t care whether I live or die. Older people don’t seem to understand why we want to ‘ruin our lives.’ The fact is, it just doesn’t matter anymore.”
Can Religion Help?
It is often argued that science isn’t supposed to teach people right and wrong—that is a job for religion. But young people today do not seem very satisfied with religion’s performance. A British clergyman who surveyed 10,000 youths found that religious faith is declining rapidly among young people in that country. In the United States, a recent Gallup poll indicated that while most American teenagers believe in God, three fourths of them did not have a high degree of confidence in organized religion.
What was bothering these youths? “The failure of churches genuinely to serve those whom Christ loved . . . the shallow and superficial stance of so many church members; the inability of congregations to deal with the basics of faith and appeal to youth on a solid spiritual basis; the absence of the feeling of excitement or warmth within the church’s fellowship, and negative feelings about the clergy in charge,” report the pollsters. Significantly, they added that “four in 10 young adults state that honesty and the personal ethical standards of clergy are ‘only average,’ ‘low,’ or ‘very low.’”
Distrustful of science, education and religion, is it any wonder that many young people today are adrift? What do they have to look forward to? “When I asked my daughter for a contribution on the topic of teen-agers,” wrote a mother, “she cheerfully and instantly supplied the quotation ‘Teenagers are the corpses of tomorrow.’” A 19-year-old in Lausanne, Switzerland, put it this way: “Why should I work as hard as my father does? Why shouldn’t I have some fun if we all may be dead in a few years?”
Young people are often accused of being shallow and materialistic. But from their infancy television has been preaching to them the virtues of instant gratification. Indeed, it would be strange if today’s youth were not materialistic, considering their “education.” On the other hand, where are young people today going to get encouragement to be noble and self-sacrificing? Not from television. Not from the examples of the world’s political and business leaders. Not from the mainline religions. Then, from where?
Help from Man’s Creator
Some youths have concluded that it is foolish to want to believe in anything. As a student at Columbia University put it, “People are basically interested in themselves.” Yet, will this attitude really lead to happiness? If you are a young person, do you really think that a life of selfishness is going to make you happy? What about the selfish people you know? Are they truly happy? As the wise man put it, “a mere lover of silver will not be satisfied with silver, neither any lover of wealth with income.” (Ecclesiastes 5:10) Why not?
Because just as people are created with material needs, such as the need for food, clothing and shelter, they also have spiritual needs. Money cannot fill those needs. The vague but persistent need felt by young people to understand ‘the meaning of life’ is a spiritual need. So is the need to give and receive unselfish love. These things cannot be bought, no matter what the TV commercials say.
However, the fact that man has spiritual needs does not mean that he is qualified to fill them. If you are a young person, you likely appreciate that, although you have a need for food, clothing and shelter, you are not as well equipped to fill that need as your parents are. Likewise, our heavenly Father is best equipped to fill our spiritual needs. Remember, he is the One who created us with those needs.
But how do you ‘get in touch’ with the Creator, so that your spiritual needs can be filled? In the last decade many young people, disillusioned with the mainline churches of Christendom, have joined other religious organizations. Some of these, like the Unification Church, claim to be Christian. Others, like the Divine Light Mission, do not. All of them claim that they can fill the spiritual needs of young people, but are they really helping their followers to draw near to our Creator? Many of them do not even teach the existence of a Creator, speaking only of a vague “first cause.” Even among those religions that claim to worship the Creator, how many tell their followers that he has both a name and a personality?
“For, look!” says the prophet Amos, “the Former of the mountains and the Creator of the wind, and the One telling to earthling man what his mental concern is, the One making dawn into obscurity, and the One treading on earth’s high places, Jehovah the God of armies is his name.”—Amos 4:13.
Yes, Jehovah is the name of our Creator, the One best qualified to fill our spiritual needs. Did you notice in the above Bible verse that Jehovah is interested in letting mankind know his will for us? He is willing to ‘make known to us his mental concern,’ or, as Today’s English Version puts it: “He makes his thoughts known to man.”
By getting to know Jehovah God and studying his thoughts, you can get excellent answers to the question, ‘What will I do with my life?’ Would you like to learn about some youths who have done just that?
[Blurb on page 6]
“Atomic bombs, pollution, terrifying drugs: Are these what the frontiers of science are all about?”
[Blurb on page 7]
The vague but persistent need felt by young people to understand ‘the meaning of life’ is a spiritual need
[Pictures on page 8]
“How do I get in touch with the Creator?”