So a random conversation with a friend brought up the phrase "meaning of life". Which is a phrase that I take a while to stop thinking about when I start. This friend fell asleep moments after bringing it up (in a completely unrelated context), leaving me the next few hours to spend pondering over the meaning of life.
To start, let me say that I have absolutely no idea what the answer is (nor does anyone else, presumably). Whether it's deep-rooted in some religion or depends solely upon how we life our lives, or whether it's a measure of how many "
good" things a person does in his lifetime or merely how happy he is... there's no way to determine what qualifies as being the meaning of life. Is it merely living your life to the maximum? But what is living your life to the maximum? Doing things that make you happy? Doing things that make you happy
without hurting anyone else? Doing things that make you,
as well as others, happy?
Many religions would consider life's meaning to be largely, if not solely, dependent on a person's faith in God. That finding God is the whole purpose of life, that becoming one with Him is what we should strive to do. Meditation, charity, dismissal of materialistic objects... the list goes on. These kinds of deeds "lead to" God. It's pretty much identical for each religion, varying slightly, but in essence, the same.
So life's meaning, largely, would be considered a toss-up between three major viewpoints: happiness, goodness and God. The first would imply satisfaction as the primary goal of life, though I'm not quite clear how this would play out. This would mean that you only need to look out for yourself, make yourself happy, and sometimes maybe even ignore the desires of those around you. Is this what people are talking about when they say "you only live once"? Is this why people spend hours and days and months having fun and trying to experience as much as they can? Is this what they conceive to be the meaning of life - being happy?
Of course there are people who are happy being the way they are, doing whatever they do and have always done without getting in anybody's way. Farmers, villagers, people happy living a simple, one which involves only themselves and their loved ones, no one else. Sometimes they've never seen or experienced anything outside their villages, which, to them,
is the whole world. And as long as they're confined to their areas and not exposed to the greed and hunger for power in the real world, as long as Pandora's box remains closed, won't they always remain happy? And if so, have they discovered the true meaning to life?
Moving onto the second one, being good. What's good can have several definitions, I don't intend to get much into that, what I imply by "good" hereforth is essentially utilitarian, keeping within the boundaries of basic humanity nonetheless. Of course, this goodness can cause happiness to the doer, but in the most general case, the average human being would be happier satisfying himself than he would be satisfying other people, even if in the latter case, happiness is caused for a larger number of human beings. Sure, people do like giving occasionally, but in reality, they'd much rather receive. Therefore, the second point would involve sacrifices throughout life, which would more than likely be classified as "good".
And there would certainly be those people who enjoy being "good", people who've conditioned themselves so strongly that they don't feel comfortable unless they're making others happy. In fact, they may get their happiness simply from the happiness of others. And likewise, another's unhappiness may cause them some sorrow as well. Nonetheless, these people have pretty much managed to train themselves to be happy and "good" at the same time - have they discovered the meaning of life?
Let's not disregard the third factor that's taken into consideration - God. Most religions say that the path to God depends on how "good" you are (this is taking things into an extremely broad sense for the sheer sake of simplicity), so this may as well be merged into the second point. But this creates a third group of people, who may not be entirely happy doing "good" deeds all their lives, and yet do so because they believe it is the way to God (and they may just be right, for some religion may just turn out to be correct in its teachings after all). Whether it be so they go to Heaven or to Paradise, or simply be reborn again as a higher being, they do good so that they evolve and acheive eternal peace. Have these people uncovered the true meaning of life?
Or is the meaning of life simply a combination of all three aspects, put together in moderation, or for that matter, an integration of all three such that each depends on the other, and by following one path a person ends up following the other two simultaneously?
I'll end here, this has already turned out to be longer than I expected. Leave your thoughts. Note that it's 2:05 am here and my thoughts weren't very collected when I wrote this, so please excuse any inaccuracies.
