What is the meaning of life? Can the meaning of life have a single answer and if so, will the answer to the meaning of life be the same for everyone? If you have found this article then you are searching, searching for meaning to your life and to the Universe itself.
If you were asked to decide the meaning of life for everyone in the Universe, what would you decide? If you had to sum up in a single sentence, what is the meaning of life, what would that sentence be? Take pen and paper and write down, right now, what the meaning of life would be. If you are honest and true to yourself, then you may very well have stumbled upon the very meaning of life itself, for the true meaning is closer than you think.
Perhaps the meaning of life is a Divine plan, perhaps the war in heaven actually happened and God is embattled with Satan. However, does that sound reasonable? Does it make sense that and all loving God would send you to hell? For that matter, if God created everything then he must have created the Devil. Perhaps the Devil was God’s highest archangel who became angry and was banished from heaven. Again, does that really sound reasonable to you? Of course, all of this is just from one religious doctrine, and there are thousand out there! Which is the true teaching and how would we ever know?
Leaving religion, let us go back to the original idea regarding the meaning of life and look closer to home. What did you write on your paper? Money, cars, houses and so on are just trinkets along the way; they are props in the play; what meaning lies behind them? Again, this will be very personal; your meaning for an object will be different to mine. Therefore using objects alone to determine the meaning of life would not work.
We have seen that religions are largely contradictory to each other and objective desires are unique to the individual. Perhaps we then have to search for common meanings as we hunt for the meaning of life. No matter what religion or society we come from, the majority would agree that taking life needlessly is wrong. However, what if the need was for survival, or because someone had caused great suffering to a loved one. The meaning of life cannot be found in morality then; the same act could be seen completely differently according to circumstances. ‘Stealing is wrong!’, but what if I had to steal to feed a dying child?
Religion does not seem to answer the question to the meaning of life, nor does collecting objects and nor does society’s moral judgments. Perhaps then, we have to look beyond all of these ideas, as we seek for the meaning of life.
Going beyond the confines of human definition and into abstract experience perhaps brings us closer to the meaning of life, yet how would you ever describe this meaning? Even if we could put into words our experience, it would still be a facsimile of the experience itself. It would also be highly personal.
This brings us back to your piece of paper; what did you write down for the meaning of life?
Meditate upon this and may discover more than you realise.
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