RUSH: Doug in Olathe, Kansas. Glad you waited, sir. It’s great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Rush, mega dittos. Mega prayers, Rush, for a miracle. I have been listening to you for decades and I wanted… You know, my travels and in my work, I have encountered a lot of people, but none like you. People have wondered since the time of antiquity, really, “What is the meaning of life? Why are we here? Why were we born?” These words to me are important and I want (crosstalk).
RUSH: Okay, hang on just a second. If you ponder things like this, I’d love to know what you do for a living. Would you mind telling me?
CALLER: I don’t mind, and I’m grateful that you asked. I have a podcast, a conservative political podcast that I have started since COVID. I was furloughed from health care. I was an executive in the health care industry.
RUSH: Okay.
CALLER: But I, in March, started a podcast — and I studied to be a priest once upon a time.
RUSH: All right.
CALLER: Now, Rush, the meaning of life — this question people have pondered — in my simple definition is this. The reason that we’re born, the reason that we’re here is to enter continually into the lives of others, to make differences for the better. And you, Rush, have fulfilled the meaning of life time and time again. You have entered my life and influenced me.
You’ve entered millions of lives to make differences for the better, and I want you to hear those words, and I want you to know that I believe them and thank you for everything, Rush. I can only hope that maybe one day maybe there would be a sound bite on your show, “Rush Limbaugh, fulfilling the meaning of life.” But in seriousness, thank you. I’m so grateful that I got through, and I’m so grateful that I got to tell you my view on that and how it applies to you.
RUSH: Well, that’s pretty powerful. I’m greatly moved by that. I think a lot of people, now and then, will get very introspective and will ask a version of that question, “Why we here? What’s the meaning of life? Is this all there is? There’s gotta be more,” particularly people who don’t think they’re mattering much, people who think that that they’ve got things to do that they haven’t done, or people who are…
Some people are very highly achieved and are not satisfied by it, not like they thought they would be. They’re very highly achieved, maybe even earn a lot of money, but there’s still an emptiness in them. So they’re running around asking themselves, “What is this all about? Why are we here?” and what again is your…? You think people are here, the reason for life, we’re here to involve ourselves and interact in the lives of others for the betterment of those lives. Is that what you say?
CALLER: Yeah. Simply put we are called to enter into the lives of others continually to make differences for the better.
RUSH: Make differences for the better, and does that stem from your religious training and beliefs or something else? Is it metaphysical?
CALLER: I mean, I think to a degree it does. Yes. The short answer to that question is yes. But I don’t think one has to necessarily be religious to want to enter into the lives of others to make differences for the better. I think that’s a basic human calling and a basic human recognition.
RUSH: It can be said that some of the greatest feelings of satisfaction that people will ever experience are when they’ve done something for somebody else that that person couldn’t do for themselves. For people that experience that, there’s nothing like it. It is a great, great, great feeling of — I don’t want to belittle it by getting the definition wrong. Satisfaction, achievement. There’s something deeply meaningful about it. So, I think you have a point, to be able to make a difference in somebody’s life in a way they might not be able to themselves.
CALLER: Exactly. Yeah. And I just want — you know, words to me are important, and those are, I think, powerful words, and given all that you’re going through, I want to make sure that somebody tells you that, that you in your life have fulfilled the meaning of life by entering into ours to make differences for the better.
I spent a lot of time thinking about things like this in a philosophical way as a way of confirming beliefs. There was a French philosopher named Pascal who practically went nuts trying to prove to himself the existence of God. He got mad as heck that God would not reveal himself. First name was Blaise, Blaise Pascal. And since God would not reveal himself, he began to philosophize, come up with ways of proving to himself God existed without God having to prove it ’cause he figured out God never was gonna prove it, that you believe or you don’t. It’s not up to me, God says, it’s up to you. It’s this thing called faith. And it’s up to you.
So Pascal began to involve all kinds of different philosophies. The thing that gave him the biggest challenge was the resurrection. He just intellectually, how in the world can that happen? So he came up with an explanation that satisfied himself. And you may be familiar with it. And I’m paraphrasing his end result. But he eventually postulated that it is much easier to believe that something that has been can be again, much easier to believe that, than to believe that something that has never been can be or will be.
And so it was that simple little philosophy that gave him some comfort. Hey, if something existed once, it can be again. Now, a lot of believers think it’s blaspheme. No, you don’t try to solve it yourself. You accept it. Believe it. That’s the faith. You start trying to prove it — well, Pascal needed to — my father was the same way. He evolved all kinds of stuff, shared his philosophies and theories on all this with my brother and me. Anyway, I’m a little long. Gotta take a break. We will be back. Thank you very much, Doug. I deeply appreciate your nice words.
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