The Meaning Of Life

That does seem to be THE question, doesn't it? Why am I here? What is my purpose? What am I supposed to do with my life?

Philosophers - really, all of us to the extent that each of us is a philosopher - have been noodling over those questions from back before time has real meaning for us. We are a fairly short-sighted species, we humans. Heck, teenagers even think they have discovered sex, generation after generation. Don't belittle that, since they have, for themselves. For a while they believe that sex is the meaning of life, since it leads to new life.

Some of us, of course, never give much thought to it. We muddle along, surviving as best we can, in our spare time stirring ourselves to hoping for something better to come along, or certainly no worse than what we already have. A theologian would frame that in terms of, say,  heaven and hell,  the terminology depending on which brand of theology they pushed. From a different theology, the terms for something better would be nirvana, or nothingness, and the something worse would be reincarnation, being forced to do all this over and over again  until somehow in our bumbling way we managed to get it "right." For many of us, somebody telling us what life is all about is all we need, so we can go back to simply living. For others, it's not so simple.

If we look past our selves, perhaps we try to peer backwards to find meaning in how we arose from the primordial ooze. Some choose to believe that the fact we originated there and progressed to here means life is inevitable because it happened, and no further exploration of its meaning is needed. Others see the unanswered questions and, choosing to place the metaphysical stamp of the divine upon them, continue searching.

Some choose to look ahead instead of back, either narrowly toward our families, our children and descendants, or more widely, encompassing our tribe, our nation, or for a real stretch, our planet. If even that isn't enough, we look skyward on a dark evening and find out how really small and insignificant we are.

As time passes, we are exposed to a wide variety of ideas about why we are here.  Is it to accomplish certain deeds? To accumulate things? To help somebody? To control others? To lead? To follow? To join? To separate? To change? To maintain? To learn? To teach? To explore? To discover? To reveal? To love? To think? To hide? To find or create beauty? To dance? To make music? To strive? To accept? To suffer? To heal? To kill? To worship? Despite ourselves, as we go along we begin to make judgments on which of all those possible goals we value and which we scorn, perhaps not even realizing we've gotten a step further to working on the question of what the meaning of life may be.

Some of us will pick one or more ideas and settle on them, deciding the search for meaning is over, complete. Others will struggle all their lives and never be satisfied that what they've found is an answer, nevermind the answer. We'll write books, we'll read books, we'll pontificate, we'll listen, we'll accept or tune out. And if there's time, as we die, we'll revisit the question yet again and wonder whether we ever got it right, and what comes next.

It all seems such a struggle, doesn't it? But what if it's really more simple, more basic that we let it be? What if it's right under our noses all the time and we just can't see it because we're insisting that something so overwhelmingly important makes it also something unfathomable? We design our God(s) to be omnipotent, omniscient, and unknowable in the fear that to know God(s) is to diminish God(s). If we lowly humans can actually understand God(s), then God(s) are no better than we, and that is untenable. We claim to be made in the image of God(s), though likely we make God(s) in our image instead, from our limited minds, fully understanding our minds are not up to the job. What if that is what is blocking us? Have we simply set ourselves an impossible task?

But....

What if the meaning of life is just as simple as that we're here to look for the meaning of life?

And what if it's not?