About Us
Memories at the End of Time
Is Life Worth Living? This question is the one Albert Camus asked in his book The Myth of Sisyphus. Camus did not advocate despair or nihilism. Rather than seeking external or transcendent meaning, Camus emphasized the importance of creating personal meaning through individual choices and actions.
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Albert Camus realized the inherent tension and conflict between the human search for meaning and the apparent lack of meaning or purpose in the universe, which he called the absurdity of life. He argued I can create meaning and find fulfillment in my life through the pursuit of personal values, authenticity, and engagement with the world. He emphasized the importance of living fully and authentically, even in the face of a world that may seem devoid of ultimate purpose.
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I believe Camus to be saying we can never answer the abstract question: What is the meaning of life? We can only answer the subjective question: Is our life worth living? And that is a question only I can ask of me, and one only I can answer for me.
Through these pages, I explore my memories of experiences, relationships, and emotions in search of my answer to my question. May it be of some guidance to you as you in asking your questions as you seek your answer to the question: Is Life Worth Living?
Who am I
As a member of the Silent Generation, I want to provide some context for my readers by recognizing the generational differences between me and the Baby Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z that followed my generation. The country of my youth was vastly different from the country where my grandchildren were raised. I grew up in a different time, land, culture, and among different people. It was a land that moved at a slow, arthritic pace and spoke in the thick, strangled accents of the Southern drawl. Although the language was still English, some English speakers found it almost incomprehensible. This land was far from the city, the upper-class neighborhoods, and the private schools where my children were educated. It was even further from the times, places, and schools of my grandchildren.
The culture of the rural South, where I grew up, was a village culture that mythologically resisted the homogenizing, centralist culture of modern cities and cultural elites. I was a part of a small, close-knit town where the accepted standards of ethics and culture were public knowledge. The limited educated class in my hometown had a single body of literature, music, philosophy, and that was the Western canon. Wikipedia describes the Western Canon as “a certain Western intellectual tradition that goes from Socrates to Wittgenstein in philosophy and from Homer to James Joyce in literature.” However, few in my hometown realized that the Western canon shaped their opinions, beliefs, and virtues. Even fewer realized that Greek and Middle Eastern thought molded that canon. (No one would have admitted to reading Joyce.) As I reflect on the world of my grandchildren, I can’t help but notice the stark contrast to the world I knew as a child.
I hold a BA and a JD from the University of Texas in Austin. I have been the chief financial and operations officers of a NYSE listed company, a serial entrepreneur, and a private equity investor. Until my seventies, I was more focused on material success than life’s meaning. Near the end of time, I came back to a question from my college years: Has life been worth living?
Why Memories at the End of Time
The concept of the end of time is a reminder that our life has an expiration date, and that we should make the most of our time and experiences. Wisdom is knowledge tempered by experience. Exploring our experiences is essential to gaining wisdom, but our experiences are in the past and all we know of the past is our memories. We are not exploring the experiences, but our memories of those experiences.
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Is meaning found in the present and future too? We have yet to experience the future, so what we know of the future is only our memories of our hopes and dreams.
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Some philosophers question whether the present exists. For them, it’s a momentary pause between past and future. Others think only the present is real. both Jesus and the Buddha taught the importance of paying attention to the present moment, without judgments or distractions from the past or the future. While this mindfulness involves a focus on the present moment, it does not mean that memories of experiences, or of hopes and dreams, are irrelevant.