The Only Context

The Oxford English Dictionary, the largest dictionary in the English language, devotes 10,000 words toward defining the word “think” in its various contexts. The word “strike” means one thing on the sports’ page and another thing on the business page. “Dribble” means one thing to a basketball player and another thing to the mother of an infant. “Battery means one thing to an automobile repairman, another thing to an artillery officer; one thing to a baseball player, another thing to a policeman. Everything derives its meaning from what precedes, what follows and what surrounds it, that is to say, from its context. Nothing under the sun exists entirely unto itself. “No man is an island,” the poet John Donne wrote. Only by seeing ourselves in the full context of that which preceded us, that which surrounds us, and that which is to follow, can we come to grips with our own meaning and purpose as human beings.

We know that we cannot physically survive…