"What's it all about, Alfie?
Is it just for the moment we live?
What's it all about when you sort it out, Alfie?"
The music has a great melody but the words also resonate if you happen to feel you have lost your way. You thought you knew what life was about - finding security, having fun, being comfortable. But now you are not so sure. The whole thing - existence and reality - is no longer as you thought. You get that empty feeling even when you have what you thought you wanted.
The materialistic world says you need to consume more goods, take more holidays, and seek more entertainment. But psychologists and psychotherapists report that when their clients devote themselves to these things they somehow find them unfulfilling and that a great deal of spiritual need is buried in the inner lives of these individuals.
People who feel an elusive sense of lacking something and a vague feeling of dissatisfaction start asking 'What's it all about?'
Some haven't yet found any meaning to their lives and this can be disconcerting. Others get stuck in doubts about what to believe. Leo Tolstoy the author of that great novel War and Peace at age 50 had been questioning the point of managing his estate, of educating his son.
"Five years ago a strange state of mind began to grow upon me; I had moments of perplexity, of a stoppage, as it were, of life, as if I did not know how I was to live, what I was to do... These stoppages of life always presented themselves to me with the same question: `Why?' and `what for?'... These questions demanded an answer with greater and greater persistence and, like dots, grouped themselves into one black spot... "
"What for? I now have six hundred desyatins in the province of Samara, and three hundred horses - what then? I could find no reply."
He also wondered why he should write:
"Well, what if should be more famous than Gogol, Pushkin, Shakespear, Molière, - than all the writers in the world - well and what then? I could find no reply."
I would suggest this kind of questioning that many people have experienced, reveals an awareness that somewhere there is a deeper purpose to one's life. Something higher than self-orientated desires for fame, power, status, pleasure.
To start with you may not find anything to believe in. But:
"It isn't necessary to have something to believe in. It's only necessary to believe that somewhere there's something worthy of belief" (Alfred Bester)
I would like to suggest that the biblical creation myth is instructive. It pictures a formless, empty total darkness with God hovering over the waters: this is followed by the emergence of light. Is this not like a light that can illuminates the worldly lower nature of our lives and which can show an alternative more inspiring alternative?
The song's lyrics continue:
"Are we meant to take more than we give
Or are we meant to be kind?
And if only fools are kind, Alfie,
Then I guess it's wise to be cruel.
And if life belongs only to the strong, Alfie,
What will you lend on an old golden rule?
As sure as I believe there's a heaven above, Alfie,
I know there's something much more,
Something even non-believers can believe in.
I believe in love, Alfie."
Yet to believe in love is one thing: to act on love is another.
In the creation myth we next get a division of the waters above and below an expanse. This might be said to symbolise a challenge for the individual. To make a personal choice between on the one hand what might be seen as of eternal worth and significance and on the other what is of passing and temporary value.
So part of the answer seems to do with discovery. What you can value. What higher principles feel right for you. And then making real choices in line with your hopes and ideals. You'll be so busy putting them into practice you won't have time to worry or fret any more.
Want to know how the song finishes?
Here is Dionne Warwick giving us the entire thing.
Copyright 2013 Stephen Russell-Lacy
As a clinical psychologist, Stephen Russell-Lacy has specialised in cognitive-behavioural psychotherapy, working for many years with adults suffering distress and disturbance.
He edits Spiritual Questions a free eZine that explores links between spiritual philosophy and the comments and questions of spiritual seekers. You can share your views and find out more about making sense of life.
His book Heart, Head and Hands draws links between the psycho-spiritual teachings of the eighteenth century spiritual philosopher Emanuel Swedenborg and current ideas in therapy and psychology.
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