Searching for Meaning
Callum Brown
Callum is taking a year out with THOMAS after completing a
Theology Degree at Lancaster University.
I grew up in the rather staid yet comfortable environment of a small Lancashire village. Upon completing my A-levels I entered university, which in turn meant interacting with overwhelming multitudes of people from all aspects of the cultural and social strata, initially this made me feel insignificant, as it seemed to me that university life was based on vacuous and false friendships which extended no further than the college drinking culture.
My disillusionment increased, as up until that point I was unaware of just how competitive nature of twenty first century life is, where competition for sex, wealth and social status was the norm. I remember in ‘freshers’ week’, expressing my reservations at the way the lads in the college football team swaggered round the nightclubs treating girls merely as objects of sexual gratification. Although I had made my reservations quite clear about this sleazy and gratuitous activity, it wasn’t long before I myself was being swept along with the tide of getting as intoxicated as I possibly could most evenings and engaging in the ‘football team mentality’, often with damaging consequences. I hit the realization that the life I was leading was a totally meaningless and nihilistic vortex. But what were the alternatives?
After all it should be a quintessential need of human beings to find meaning in just about anything - especially in their own lives. I attended an Anglican primary school, but a highly secular state High School in which religion was taught merely as an academic subject, not something to be believed. My upbringing had been culturally Anglican, but lacked any real religious substance.
I began to attend Mass at the Catholic Chaplaincy; it was there that I began a period of self-emptying and renewal. I’ am very much appreciative of modern liberal values and I hold them very dear. However, it seemed increasingly apparent that many people do not have a right or recognize their duty to participate in 
society and seek together the common good and well-being of all, especially the poor and vulnerable, thus even in modern Britain many people continue to be without the essential human dignity which rests on the age-old Gospel cornerstones of fellowship and mutual respect. This lack of participation in society and dereliction of social duty is what leads to the meaningless and nihilistic vortex.
Within the Catholic Church I encountered a genuine concern for the poor and disadvantaged. Here at THOMAS I continue to see the dignity of people being restored through encountering our Lord within them. It comes relatively easy to see Christ in the sick, elderly, poor and persecuted. As we instantly associate these qualities with our Lord himself. They are underdogs, just like we imagine Jesus to be. However to see Christ in the addict can often be hard for the best of us.
This is part of what we are all called to do and the work of THOMAS restores this most beautiful meaning to what was a chaotic and nihilistic existence.