"All is imaginary--family, office, friends, the street--all imaginary, far away or close at hand, the woman closest of all, but the truth is only that you are pressing your head against the wall of a windowless and doorless cell."
     So said Czech novelist Franz Kafka, perhaps most famous for his books, The Castle and The Trial, two novels that, along with his Metamorphosis, explore the disenchantment and alienation which, as he saw it, plague the human experience.
       In some ways, Kafka, along with Karl Marx, was absolutely correct.  Many people living in this "modern" world feel lonely and apart from their lives and the days in which they live them.  Though they get up each morning and go about their tasks and callings, they frequently wonder why they do, and they often feel deeply separated from what these activities really mean for them.  They indeed feel as if they are banging their heads against a blank wall.
     We think here of the rock band Pink Floyd's acclaimed film, The Wall.  The Wall chronicles and explores the inner journey of its protagonist Pink, returning again and again to the image of him standing before a high wall, a wall that, try as he might, he can never climb.  His life seems pointless, as if he is always confronting a wall he cannot overcome.
     Perhaps some of us relate.  We all encounter walls, walls of challenge, walls of futility that, despite our best efforts, we will never be able to conquer.  Death is certainly one. Paralysis is another.  Birth defects are one more.  If we view these challenges through the lens of a terminal planet, a planet with no hope and no future, a planet governed by the opaqueness of life's end, it's often no stretch to lapse into the hopelessness of it all.
     Yet most of us do not.  We keep going.  We keep on pressing our heads against the walls of the windowless cell.  All things considered, we would rather live than die.
     Life is indeed grand, a sweet gift to us all.  Even if it one day ends.
     The good news, however, is that if life is indeed meaningful--and almost all of us agree it is--it will never end.  Life is only meaningful in a meaningful universe.
     We can't have it both ways.  Rest well, Franz Kafka.