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Who has the Map for Today?

I'll admit it.  I am a guy, and I rarely stop for directions!  It has something to do with male genes for ego control--I am in charge!  I am self-sufficient!  I will not admit a weakness!  But there was the time when I went to the King of Prussia Malls, and I had to stop and read the directory. The place is literally several malls put together with duplicate stores.  The "You are Here" map, a universal language, bailed me out. (Nobody saw me looking at it too!) 

Walker Percy put out a book called "Lost in the Cosmos," with the subtitle "the Last Self-Help Book."  His major theme is that we cannot transcend ourselves.  By ourselves, we ARE ourselves alone in the cosmos.  Whatever meaning there is, we must manufacture it.  "HERE" is therefore wherever we want it to be.  So from that standpoint, Percy argues that we are fundamentally "lost."  Or, I might add--"alone"--left to ourselves as our own "meaning makers."  The "X" factor becomes--"You Are WHATEVER You Make Yourself to Be." 

Okay.  If you have continued to follow this argument, let me say that a lot of people are perfectly content to live this way.  You are your own god.  Meaning and value are what you say they are. 
Percy argues that this leaves us lost, void of ultimate meaning.  Percy quotes author John Cheever: "the main emotion of the adult Northeastern American who has had all the advantages of wealth, education, and (with a) culture that is disappointment. Our own meaning ultimately disappoints.

There is a gift in disappointment.  It can put us on the track of what we desperately seek....more than ultimate meaning, I believe, but the assurance that we are not ultimately alone.  Or, forgive the rewrite: our ultimate meaning is that we are not alone.  It is not what we invent.  It is what we discover that a Creator has planted within us.  As Augustine wrote, "Our hearts are made restless until they rest in God."