Story of the Bottlecaps Covered in Beans

As part of a service project a while back, I visited an Adult Learning Center.

It was there that I learned a momentous clue about the meaning of life.

A woman confined to a wheelchair and living with a mental disability was sitting at a table. In front of this Oracle was a box full of beans. Sprinkled and mixed throughout the beans were plastic caps like one would find confining Pepsi or Coke or anything into a bottle.

I looked around the place, thinking of the meaning these adults living with mental illness could find in their lives. The oracle's long trips down into the beans often left her feeble hands empty. Occasionally, she would lift up a cap and smile. Does her life have any other pattern?

Does my life have any other pattern? I play video games. I take long trips into an online world. Many times I lose. Sometimes I win, and it feels good. Is this accomplishing anything? Is this a complicated box full of beans?

Forget video games, what about other things in life? I am interested in psychology research, biomedical research, philosophy. Is searching for the answers in these fields just digging our hands in bigger and more complicated beans, sometimes getting a good cap out and sometimes coming back empty-handed?

I use the wrong words. Life lived this way can have "meaning" but does it have any "significance"? I'm not qualitatively different from an invalid staring out the window and occasionally flooding himself with joy (and possibly urine) as he sees a pretty bird outside his window. This dignifies his life, but what does it say about mine?