To be or not to be? How does your mortality make you feel?

I’m 50.

I’m over the hill.

I’ve begun a new career in the mental health field working with clients who have serious and persistent mental illness. I have a client who is chronically suicidal, yet he comes back weekly to meet with me where he rails against the futility of life and its meaninglessness.

Something makes him hold on.

Meanwhile, I’m intimately active in my local community theater, acting, directing, and managing. I am on the threshold of auditions for a major play and in the throes of editing Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra for production next summer.

Something drives me to do theater.

It appears my new work and theater give me meaning.

Where does one derive meaning for life?

Where do you get meaning for your life?