Jacking it in...

I'd love to irresponsibly "drop everything" and devote my time to working out the meaning of life, to working out which (if any) religious course I should take. This seems so important, it seems worth stopping everything else for, until I've sorted it. This could be never of course, in which case I would be pondering these things till I die, but on a full time basis. This isn't practical- I've been given a physical body, and needs that involve having a family, and keeping that family sustained and clothed and housed- so if I'm to balance these things, I've got to do the "working out" bit part-time. That just doesn't seem right to me. Did God give us all these "other things" to worry about so that we wouldn't spend all our time pondering the big questions, as did the Greeks, who had slaves to do the "less important" stuff? That's what's needed: somebody to do my work for me, and cook my meals, and clean my house, so that I can do the brain work. It's not going to happen. So I'm doomed to trying to find the "path" in my spare time, and who wants to spend their spare time doing that when they're so tired from doing all the other things...Jesus told us not to worry about these things, and not even to carry a food pouch as we go forth preaching: that's the right idea- God, or at least one of his creatures, will look after us- and yet, he also says later that his disciples should carry a food pouch (don't rely on others after all) and Paul says that if a man doesn't want to work, "neither should he eat". What's the answer? I think the latter concession that Jesus made reveals the truth: you have to put the bread on the table yourself, as the Christian would say, "you have to give God the works to bless". Where does the welfare state fit in with all of this? I suppose I AM being paid to advance my knowledge for my own benefit at the moment, but if only there was a course in discovering the meaning of life (and I don't mean the Alpha course). I suppose I'm trying to say that I don't want to be lying on my death bed thinking back over my life as a computer programmer, or as an anything: I want to think "I got to the bottom of it", and to be at peace. The thing I lack, the thing most people lack, is the time to do it.