In search of meaning …

… Paris Review – The Vale of Soul-Making, Jeffrey C. Johnson. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

… what Keats could not, or refused to, see is that the irrationality he perceived in religious salvation is present in his own system, too. There’s no ultimate purpose to the suffering that he, his family, and his patients have had to endure; it’s not as if the fever of tuberculosis consciously, benevolently struck Keats’s mother and brother to help them shape their souls. But Keats went to great lengths to convince himself of just that